


Ancestor Impersonation 101

by Thuriel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-15 12:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 59,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13612941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thuriel/pseuds/Thuriel
Summary: It's 2029, and Lily Potter is bored. But don't worry -- soon, neither of those things will be true.





	1. An Unfortunate Little Incident at the Ministry

**Author's Note:**

> Because of the nature and premise of this story, I think I should be upfront: As far as I'm concerned, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child does not exist. If its depiction of the future ever agrees with mine, it is only by coincidence. 
> 
> This story is a work in progress. I'd estimate a final length of about 200K words... but I guess we'll have to see.

Lily Potter hated working the desk.

Some nights, she hated it because nothing ever happened. An array of fancy gizmos lined the desk, each spelled to react to certain dangers -- the one on the far left, for example, whistled sharply whenever anyone tried to apparate into the Ministry, and another that looked like a bouquet of metallic flowers wilted in the presence of glamours and illusions. Working the desk meant sitting there, on “alert,” while exactly none of those gizmos did anything at all.

But then, some nights she hated it because something _did_ happen. More than once she’d been startled out of her boredom by the loud, rattling _ka-chunka_ of the center gizmo, which went off whenever anyone cast any Dark magic anywhere on the British Isles -- anywhere not warded against Ministry detection, at least. Unfortunately this included people who were licensed or carried some other special dispensation, and anyway her duties started and ended with sending a message to whoever was on call that night. Even if it was an actual criminal, it made no difference to her, or to the desk.

Sitting back in the awkward hardwood chair, she groaned and covered her face with the _Daily Prophet_ she was outright too bored to read. The worst part was that she had trapped herself, and Carmichael knew it. Auror Carmichael was second-in-command of Wizarding Britain’s Aurors, and he was in charge of scheduling and deployment. He was the one who kept putting her down for desk duty, and the only person who could make him stop was the actual Head of the Auror Department, and Lily _refused_ to go crawling to her father for help. Especially over something so _stupid_.

Tossing the _Prophet_ away, she stood and stretched, cursing the stupid chair she had to sit in. It was too small, inflexible, and heavy; one night she’d put a cushioning charm on it only to find herself written up in the morning for “sleeping on duty.” Goddamn Carmichael.

She didn’t know for sure what his problem with her was, but she had a pretty good guess. He was old enough to remember the Dark Wars -- the collective term for the years the Dark Lord Voldemort had been active, in mostly the 1970s and ‘90s. Like many of his generation, he had something of a love-fear relationship with the hero who had ended the Dark Wars, Harry Potter, who of course was now his boss. Love, because Harry had defeated Voldemort… and fear, because he had defeated Voldemort, _and nobody understood how_.

There was a very persistent rumor that Harry Potter was a Dark Wizard of terrible power who was merely biding his time before making his true intentions known. Nobody would say so to his face, of course, and his thirty-odd years of service as an Auror had earned him true respect from the people who mattered, but that didn’t exactly stop the backroom gossip.

And his daughter, who had taken three seconds before the Sorting Hat put her in Slytherin? Who had deliberately earned an Outstanding in every OWL and NEWT taken by either of her elder brothers? Who graduated from Auror training with _better scores than her father_?

None of those things had been particularly _hard_ \-- James, for example, had taken barely any NEWTs at all, being set on his own goal of following their mother into professional Quidditch. And, frankly, Harry Potter had never been great at academics, and his Auror Qualifying Exams showed it. But it was the principle of the thing -- why she had done it. And why people cared.

And so here she sat, consigned to the desk more nights than not, where nothing ever happened even when something happened.

A small whirr distracted her -- on the corner of the desk, a minor Sneakoscope puttered around for a few spins, then fell still again. Lily stared at it, wondering if her own discontent had set it off. Maybe best not to note that one in the log, then.

She sat back down and glanced over at the one gizmo on the desk she hated more than any other -- the clock. It claimed she had five more hours until the end of her shift. She thought this was very unlikely, but not even Carmichael would stoop so low as to tamper with the desk clock just to torture her more.

At least, she hoped not.

A sense of peace and joy interrupted her sulking. She sat up straight and looked around for what must surely be an incoming _Patronus_ \-- yes, there. A glowing white owl swooped in and perched weightlessly on the errant Sneakoscope. It looked at her, tilted its head, and spoke in her brother Al’s voice: “Intruders in the Department. Red robes, like a uniform. What’s going on up there?”

Al Potter was the most unassuming of the Potter siblings, especially in comparison to the braggadocious celebrity that was James, but he had taken his quiet curiosity straight into a career as an Unspeakable. When he mentioned the Department, he meant _of Mysteries_.

But that meant there were intruders in the Department of Mysteries, and none of her gizmos had noticed a thing.

She waved her wand over the desk and muttered a diagnostic charm. In an ideal world, a deafening cacophony would have filled the room as every single gizmo went off at once. Instead, none of them so much as twitched. Well, that settled that -- she would trust her brother over demonstrably non-responsive sensors and alarms. She didn’t know why they weren’t working, but that was no longer her problem. It could be Carmichael’s problem in the morning. She had an actual job to do.

Her first responsibility, as the Auror Desk, was to alert the Auror On-Call of the emergency. This she did by picking up a handbell, tapping it with her wand, and ringing it furiously. The bell was paired to an identical bell sitting in the on-call lounge, and was how she got to demand their attention when it was really important. She’d never gotten to ring the bell before -- they had gentler methods for matters of lower priority. It was pretty fun.

The ringing cut off abruptly when someone on the other end silenced theirs. A moment later, a rough, half-awake voice spoke in her ear. “Desk, this is Zabini. What’s the matter?”

Lily nodded to herself. Auror Zabini was four years her senior, and hardly the friendliest man in the corps, but he was competent. “Intruders in the Department of Mysteries,” she reported. “They’ve bypassed or disabled the wards here. I’ll meet you on-site.”

There was a long pause before Zabini came back with, “Understood, Potter.” She hadn’t waited. She was already most of the way down the hall towards the lifts.

One was sitting there with its doors open, which was lucky. She careened in, caught herself, and snapped out the emergency override password: “ _Cannon cup counterfeit._ Department of Mysteries!”

The lift doors slid closed, and then the lift dropped into a near free-fall for a couple of seconds. When it jerked to a stop, she had already arrived at the Department of Mysteries. As the doors slid open, she recovered her balance, looked out, and froze.

On the other side of the doors, three wizards in unfamiliar deep-red robes stared back at her for a long, silent heartbeat before bounding into action. All three sent minor curses in her direction, meant to keep her pinned down in the lift, and hurried for the door into the Department hub.

Lily just grinned. If they wanted to open hostilities with an Auror, well, they’d sealed their own fate.

Not even bothering to deflect, she ducked under the first incoming curses and ran forward at the retreating intruders. They continued to pelt her with nuisance spells, so she held up her left hand, palm out, and cast a _protego_ \-- a simple shield, but more than capable of handling the nonsense they were throwing at her.

They made it to the door before she could do much else. Pushing through, they slammed it shut behind them, as if that would buy them any time -- still charging forward, Lily stabbed her wand forward, twisted it, and snapped it off to the left, and the door sprang back open.

However, when she passed through into what she thought of as _the spinning room_ , there were no red robes in sight. “ _Homenum revelio,_ ” she whispered, then growled to herself when she felt her magic fizzle. Of _course_ the Department of Mysteries would be warded against detection spells.

Keeping her guard up, eyes and wand swiveling around the room as she walked, she crossed the circular room to the other side, picking an unmarked door essentially at random. For all that it was the spinning room, it hadn’t actually done any spinning yet, but she certainly wouldn’t complain.

Just before she reached her chosen door, she caught movement in the corner of her eye. Immediately she rolled away and back, and not a moment too soon -- a powerful Reductor curse flashed through where she’d been standing and hit the floor, throwing up dust and shrapnel and leaving a small crater.

Lily pointed her wand. “ _Stupefy._ ” She didn’t expect it to hit, especially since she’d said it out loud, but it bought her the time to stand back up and ready herself for a real duel. Her apparent opponent seemed perfectly content to give her that time, as he casually batted away her stunner but otherwise merely stood and waited.

He was wearing one of those red robes too, but he wasn’t one of the first three she’d chased into the spinning room. He was distinctly larger -- not outside human norms or anything, but she eyeballed him at well over six feet, with broad shoulders and, from what she could tell under his robes, a muscular build.

He tilted his head at her in a mockery of formal bow, then lifted his wand and bellowed, “ _Fragor_!” The pale yellow of a Bludgeoning Hex shot towards her, but she slid to the side and let it impact on the far wall. This guy was an unknown, and until she figured out what kind of power he could put behind his spells, it was safer to dodge than to shield.

She stuck to standard Auror tactics to start, giving him three more stunners in a tight triangle that should punch through basic shields. His chosen shield was anything but basic; he conjured a shiny, magical mirror that reflected her stunners back at her. Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t anywhere near the same place anymore, staying on the move even as she cast “ _Incarcerous_ ,” followed immediately by a silent _fragor_ of her own. He easily blocked the _incarcerous_ , but he hadn’t expected the Bludgeoning Hex; it clipped him on the shoulder and blew him back, spinning through the air until he hit the door to who knew which section of the Department.

Her follow-up _stupefy_ hit him in the chest, and he slumped to the side.

Lily blinked, surprised. She hadn’t actually expected that to hit -- she’d kind of assumed her opponent was better than that. Well, no matter. A couple flicks of her wand had him tied up and propped against the wall, and she got her first chance to really examine his robe. It was a deep burgundy on the whole, with black trims, and the arms had silver embroidery that traveled up from the wrists like veins. It had a hood, but none of the men she’d seen so far had been wearing it up.

It wasn’t a design she was familiar with, but it wasn’t like “Fashion Design of Dark Cabals” was part of Auror training. Maybe one of her more veteran teammates would recognize it.

Shaking her head, she stepped over to the closest door, because it was as good as any. Part of her hoped she was walking into another group of red-robes, because she’d gotten all excited for a real fight, and it had ended in like five seconds. She was itching for an excuse to stretch her wings a bit, figuratively speaking.

Unfortunately -- or fortunately, rather -- the door instead took her into a quiet, shadowy room that contained only one person. Al Potter, Lily’s older brother, stepped out from a dark corner with relief, shimmering with a dropped Disillusionment Charm.

“There you are, Lily,” he said, lowering his wand. “I was wondering what was taking so long.”

Of the three Potter siblings, Al looked the most like their father, Harry. He stood with similar stature, he had the trademark unruly black hair, and he was the only one to inherit their grandmother’s bright green eyes. Despite the secrecy surrounding his work as an Unspeakable, he would probably be the easiest to impersonate, even without Polyjuice.

So, Lily kept her wand trained on him. “Password,” she demanded.

Al groaned and rubbed his face with one hand. They all had words assigned to them by Harry when they were children -- phrases that only they and their immediate family knew, a way to verify identity just in case it ever came up. But Lily was probably the only one of them who’d actually thought about those old passwords in years.

After ten or fifteen seconds of wracking his brain, Al finally said, “ _Lemon drops_. Merlin, it’s been a while…”

Lily nodded, and relaxed. “Al, what’s going on? Who are these guys?”

“I wish I knew,” Al said. “I’m not even supposed to be here this late.”

“Just tell me what’s happened so far,” Lily said, casting a silent _lumos_ and using it to peer around the room. It looked like a small lab, with a long table in the middle covered in loose parchment and tightly-sealed jars. For her first real peek into the interior workings of the Department of Mysteries, it was fairly disappointing.

“Well, I… might have fallen asleep over a report I was writing,” Al said. “I woke up when I heard the walls spinning. They only do that when there are intruders, so I knew there was trouble.”

“You mentioned the red robes in your _Patronus_ ,” Lily reminded him.

He nodded. “A couple of them came in here and looked around. They didn’t find whatever they were looking for, so they left. They didn’t find me, either.” He shrugged. “So I sent that off to you and kept hidden, just in case.”

“I don’t suppose you overheard them talking about their goal or anything?” Lily was satisfied now that there was nothing fancy or unusual hidden in the room, so she could believe that the red-robes had left it quickly. Al answered her question by shaking his head, and Lily sighed. “So we don’t know how many of them there are, and we don’t know what they want.” Thinking of Auror Zabini, she continued, “The others should be here by now… I’ll get you to the lifts so we can sort this out.”

Al nodded and brandished his wand. He was no Auror, but he was still a Potter, and none of them were exactly pushovers in a fight.

When they left the lab and re-entered the hub, it was completely empty. Even the guy she’d stunned and tied up was gone. There was still no sign of Zabini or any other Aurors, either. Deeply bothered by this, Lily kept her wand up and at the ready as they began to cross the room, Al staying close to her back.

About halfway across the room, there was the sudden sound of at least a dozen voices speaking different incantations, and in an instant a multitude of spells began to streak in from around the edge of the room -- too many to count or identity but it was clear the red-robes had them surrounded.

She reacted instantly, stabbing her wand straight up in the air then sweeping it down at an outward angle to waist-height, at the same time reaching back with her left hand to pull Al in close. “ _Pyramis Occlidus_ ,” she cried, louder than perhaps necessary, but she was after all pressed for time -- just before the first incoming curses arrived at the center of the room, a translucent pyramid of protective magical force shimmered into being, covering both Lily and her brother entirely, though they had to crouch down a bit to fit.

As the incoming spells hit the angled shield, they were deflected up at the ceiling. Some of them caused damage up there, but Lily spared only a quick glance to make sure nothing was going to fall on top of them. _Pyramis Occlidus_ was one of the best options for 360-degree coverage from spells, but it had its drawbacks, in particular the fact that it did nothing to protect from physical dangers like rocks falling onto your head.

It also prevented magic from going in either direction, in or out, so she would have to drop it before they could fight back. She could have chosen to maintain the shield and bunker down instead, but she doubted it would be long before one of their mysterious assailants used a curse that would break through -- or even maybe the Killing Curse, which of course no magical shield could block. They’d be sitting ducks.

So, as soon as that first volley was over, she dropped the shield and stood up straight. “Back to back,” she called over her shoulder, and took up a defensive stance, eyes flicking around for attackers she still couldn’t see.

“Right,” Al called back with blatantly false bravado. She felt him settle into position.

They were surrounded and exposed, and at something of a massive disadvantage -- they would have to rely on shields and deflections to protect them, rather than the altogether preferable strategy of dodging, simply because they had to protect each other. If Lily dodged a stunner, it would just hit Al in the back, and then where would she be? But she'd called for that strategy anyway, because she didn't want to leave her older brother exposed. It was just a bad situation to be in, all around.

She used her wand to rapidly draw a dispersal sigil in mid-air, then focused her magic and cast _through_ it -- “ _Visus Coactus_.” There was a bright flash of light, and five red-robes stumbled back, their invisibility stripped from them. That wouldn’t be all of them, but it was a start. It was also all she had time for before they started in with the curses again, and she had to focus on not getting hit. As useful as sigils were, she just wasn’t fast enough with them to use them in the middle of a duel, much less this particular mess.

The red-robes seemed more disorganized now, casting individually with no real pattern. Probably their one big trick had been their coordinated opening volley, and now they were just trying to wear her down with a torrent of minor curses and hexes. None of their spells would do anything terrible, but she certainly couldn’t afford to let herself get hit by any and still hope to win the fight. Given enough time, their strategy might even work -- with five opponents she could see and an unknown number she could not, she only rarely had the opportunity to counterattack, at least without leaving herself unacceptably open.

Plus, given the circumstances, she was forced to rely only on the strongest shields that took the most power to cast, because she simply didn’t have time to tailor her shields for each incoming spell. It was draining, and there was a chance she would run out of stamina before they all did. She was already getting a headache just from the constant flashes of multi-colored light as dozens of different spells came flying towards her.

But, she wouldn’t have to keep it up forever -- Zabini’s team would be by any second, and then the tides would turn in a big way. He should have been there already, actually. She wondered what was holding him up.

She heard Al grunt in surprise, then saw him land awkwardly on his side, clutching his ribs. She took the opportunity to duck, and recognized only as they passed overhead that the most recent spells from the red-robes were much more dangerous than schoolyard hexes. Well -- if they were going to escalate, she would too.

Moving to stand over Al, she whipped her wand around in a big circle and summoned a ring of fire. It expanded steadily outwards, trapping the red-robes against the walls, and buying her a few moments to examine her brother.

“I’m okay,” Al coughed from beneath her, and sat up. She knelt down quickly, taking in the fact that he was visibly unharmed -- whatever had hit him had not done any real physical damage. She didn’t have time for a more detailed diagnosis, so she just held out her arm to help him back to his feet.

Then she spun around and transfigured her fire into ice. Those red-robes who were smart enough to cast Flame-Freezing charms of their own to render the fire harmless, but stupid enough to continue standing in it -- they were all trapped instantly. She couldn’t exactly count invisible bodies, but she thought she’d gotten a fair few of them with that trick. She even managed to stun a couple who turned to help their comrades before the battle restarted in earnest.

She grinned a bit as she deflected a Bone-Breaker Hex back towards its caster. This was a _much_ more manageable number of enemies to be dealing with. She even dropped a few more with spells woven in between her near-continuous shield casts. Despite their superior numbers, Lily knew she could beat these mysterious dark wizards now, if she had enough time.

Then Al let another curse slip through his defenses. He stumbled back, bumping hard into Lily, who was barely able to adjust in time to deflect a Conjunctivitis. Then a second spell followed and hit her in the back -- just a Bludgeoning Hex, she registered dimly as she slammed forward onto her face, the worst it could do was break her spine and it didn’t feel like it had -- she rolled over, ready to hop back up to her feet, but found herself stuck to the ground, unable to get up.

Her body wasn’t frozen, she confirmed quickly by struggling, but rather it was like she was glued down. She still had some range of movement, and she took advantage by hitting one of the remaining visible red-robes with a nasty curse that made him feel like his skin was being peeled off. She was rewarded by getting hit with _Expelliarmus_ ; unable to defend herself in any way, she felt her wand jerk itself out of her fingers and was just glad they’d chosen that instead of, really, anything else.

Al had stumbled back to his feet at this point. Noticing Lily’s predicament, he hurried over and knelt down. “I recognize this,” he said, and he touched his wand to the ground next to her head. “ _Dimitti sal--_ ”

He stopped casting. He stopped casting because there was a hole in his chest.

One of the red-robes had escalated up to lethal piercing spells, and Al had been too distracted to protect himself.

His blood splattered across her face. He wavered slightly, looking down at himself with an expression of casual surprise, then began to topple.

Lily didn’t have her wand. She stretched out her hand as far as it could go with her arm glued to the floor, took a deep, shuddering breath, and shouted, “ _Statte_!” She felt the magic flow out through her fingers and relaxed back with a gasp. She was better than most at wandless magic, but _Statte_ was no cinch even with a wand.

It was an emergency medical stasis charm. As Al finished falling over, he was frozen in position, his chest still gaping open but it wasn’t hurting him. He wouldn’t bleed out. He wouldn’t do anything. Until the stasis was dispelled, or wore off, and Lily knew from training that she could only maintain it for about an hour in the best conditions…

Her brother needed real medical attention as soon as possible, or he was going to die.

Looking wildly around the room, Lily noticed that the incoming spells had stopped. Instead, the remaining red-robes had tightened into a smaller circle around the two incapacitated Potters, and they were chanting in unison, some long incantation she didn’t recognize.

Getting desperate, she knocked one of them back with a wandless Banishing Charm, but they merely closed ranks again and kept chanting. And before she could try something else, the chanting came to an abrupt stop, and the red-robes all pointed their wands down at her.

She felt herself sinking down, like they had transfigured the floor into goo. She fought to stay up, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t escape -- the last thing she managed before her hands sunk beneath the floor was a hasty Bubble-Head Charm, in the hopes that it would help her breathe once she was submerged in… whatever she was sinking into. She didn’t know how long she could last down there. Hopefully longer than it took to get rescued.

And just where the _fuck_ was Zabini?

And then she was under --

It felt like she was floating in a pool of hot tar for a moment. And then, strangely, turbulence -- she was knocked around, felt herself turn over and over and she tumbled, maybe, through something kind of like a tunnel, before the world went bright and then dark and then she found herself outside, that was, outdoors, and she caught flashes of a clear evening sky, gray slabs of stone, lots of men in black robes, two wizards dueling, their figures obscured by the bright beams of light that seemed to connect their wands --

If Lily was confused by her appearance in this crowd, she was hardly the only one. Woozily, she tried to push herself to her feet, even as chaos descended around her. There was a lot of shouting, but a ringing in her ears prevented her from making out any words. The bright beams of light vanished, and the smaller of the duelists took off running. He looked like a teenaged boy, probably no more than fifteen, and other than some weaving around to avoid some curses he was headed straight for a lump on the ground that looked an awful lot like a dead body.

The other duelist, a tall and imposing man with oddly gray skin, shouted something at the assembled men in black robes. They seemed to pull back, giving Lily a clear path towards the running boy. She started in that direction.

The boy reached the body and clutched it in his arms. It looked like another teenaged boy, but older, closer to adulthood. Once settled, the first boy lifted up his wand, pointed it in her direction, and shouted, “ _Accio--_ ”

And then he noticed her. She didn’t know what she looked like -- didn’t know where she was or why she’d turned up there after sinking into the floor of the Department of Mysteries, didn’t know what that kind of travel may have done to her appearance -- but he froze in total shock.

In the dim light, he looked a lot like Al, and Lily wondered if this was some kind of nightmare as punishment for letting him get hurt.

And then a bolt of green light shot across her vision and struck him even as some ornate trophy cup sailed in from behind her. He slumped over bonelessly as the cup flew through where his hands had been and clattered to the earth beyond him.

There was a moment of stillness. Then the gray-looking wizard, who had cast the Killing Curse, started laughing. The assorted wizards in black started laughing with him.

She reached the boys. She knelt down and gathered them both in her arms. She didn’t really understand what was going on, but one of them was maybe a young Al? And the wizards in black were clearly the bad guys.

She wished her ears would stop ringing. She wished she didn’t feel so dizzy.

The gray wizard was staring at her now. Saying something. She couldn’t understand it anyway. He raised his wand -- was he about to kill her, too?

The boy had wanted the cup, she thought. She may as well let him hold it in their tableau of death. So she reached to the side and summoned it.

A furious look crossed the gray wizard’s face before the cup smacked solidly into her hand. She was not expecting it to be a Portkey. As she felt the hook-like sensation jerking her away, she would have dropped the cup in surprise, if it had been possible to do so.

They emerged on a cool, grassy lawn amid _so much noise_. She curled over the two dead boys, partly to protect them -- from what? -- partly just to get _away_. The Portkey had done her no favors after her previous trauma, and now she was being overwhelmed by some terrible combination of music, cheering, and screams. At least her hearing was returning, but she almost preferred the ringing to whatever nonsense was going on -- it sounded almost like hundreds of people were present --

And then a stunning spell hit her where she lay, and she slipped into the quiet black.

 

* * *

 

When she was revived, Lily felt _much_ better. She was bound, sitting in a chair, facing a blank wall, her entire body ached, and she could tell that she had been administered Veritaserum, but despite all of that, she felt almost… floaty. She was pretty happy, actually!

She heard the shuffle of feet behind her. Two people, she guessed. She was glad for the company, and hoped she could help them in some way.

One spoke. “Can you hear me?” His voice was old, but not frail. Stern.

“Yes,” she answered. Why would she not?

Same voice. “Do you know where you are?”

She looked around. It really did seem to be a featureless wall, but if she turned as far as she could she just managed to see the edge of… a desk, maybe? “No,” she said.

“You are at Hogwarts,” the voice said. “Are you familiar?”

What an odd question. But she trusted that the old man was telling the truth. “Of course. I went here.” She tried to remember where she’d been just prior -- she could remember heading down into the Department of Mysteries, but after that… a fight in the hub? Wizards in black standing among gravestones?

She was distracted by another question. “What is your name?”

“Lily Potter,” she answered, and did _that_ ever get a reaction. While she waited patiently, the two men behind her had a rapid discussion behind what she guessed was a _Muffliato_ privacy shield. Then it dropped, and the voice spoke to her again.

“Where did you acquire the Auror robes you’re wearing?”

“They’re mine,” Lily said. “They were issued to me. Madam Malkin’s has the contract with the Ministry, I think, but I’m not really sure.”

“You are an Auror?”

“Yes.” It was still the old man asking questions. The second presence behind her hadn’t spoken where she could hear. She hadn’t even figured out the first voice yet. It didn’t sound like any of the professors she remembered. “My first year out of training,” she admitted, in case they found it helpful.

“What was your name when you attended Hogwarts?”

“Lily Potter,” she said again. “I haven’t changed my name.”

There was a moment of quiet. Then, footsteps, as the two men both walked around from the back to stand in front of her.

The men were very distinct. One was an old man with long, white hair and beard, half-moon spectacles perched on a crooked nose, and rather gaudy robes. The other had black, greasy hair and a scowl, and his robes were nondescript.

She recognized them both.

“Do you know who I am?” the old man asked.

“No,” Lily said, “but you’re dressed as Albus Dumbledore.”

The two men shared a look. “What do you think, Severus?” pseudo-Dumbledore asked his companion, apparently content to hold this conversation in front of her.

“She is not Lily,” the other man said flatly. “I admit she bears a certain resemblance, but Lily’s hair was not as orange, and obviously her eyes--”

“Of course, Severus,” pseudo-Dumbledore said.

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” Lily interrupted. “Did something happen to them?” She craned her neck around, hoping there was a mirror she hadn’t noticed she could use to see herself.

“Your eyes are not green,” pseudo-Snape said in his same flat tone.

“Oh,” Lily said, relaxing, “of course not.” But then she thought of a woman named Lily Potter who _did_ have green eyes, and she eyed the men in front of her suspiciously, both looking like people she knew had died long before she was even born. Her mind was too fuzzy at the moment for genuine shock or horror, but she faintly thought that those were what she should have been feeling.

Pseudo-Dumbledore seemed to figure something out at the same time, because he steepled his fingers together and asked, “Miss Potter, what is your date of birth?”

“Third of May, two thousand eight,” she answered promptly, still bound by the truth-serum.

Pseudo-Dumbledore settled back on his heels with the expression of someone who was glad to have been proven right. Pseudo-Snape, however, looked thunderous.

“She is mocking us,” he said, turning to his companion. “She is clearly resisting the Veritaserum in some way. If you would permit me--”

“That will not be necessary,” the old wizard interrupted firmly. He looked back to Lily. “Miss Potter,” he said, “the current date is the twenty-fifth of June, nineteen ninety five.” He peered at her over the tops of his spectacles. “Do you believe me?”

There was a pause as Lily’s head spun. “Well, yes, actually,” she said, the truth serum forcing her to admit it, and in the process cementing it in her mind, turning suspicion to accepted fact. Yes, she was in the past somehow.

Wasn’t that crazy? She almost giggled, but caught herself in time. She blamed it on whatever potions were in her system. She guessed at _least_ a Calming Draught, but probably something else, too, to make her so cooperative. Plus, of course, the Veritaserum.

“You said I was dressed like Albus Dumbledore,” Dumbledore said. “I assure you I am he after all. How did you know what I look like?”

“I’ve seen your portrait,” Lily answered. “In the Headmaster’s office. Your portrait is there.” She nodded her head in the direction of Snape. “His too.”

“How fascinating,” Dumbledore said with the faint hint of a twinkle in his eye. Snape studiously looked away, his scowl deeper than ever. “And, Miss Potter, do you know how you have come to find yourself in what you would consider the past?”

Lily shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. Last I remember I was in the Department of Mysteries. Then maybe something about a graveyard? It’s all a blur.”

“Ah yes,” Dumbledore said, now far less amused. “The graveyard.” He leaned forward slightly. “Miss Potter, I would very much like to know what you saw in the graveyard. Would you permit me to draw the memory out so we can view it together?”

Lily hesitated, but the Veritaserum compelled her to answer-- “Sure, go ahead.”

Dumbledore nodded, then bent over more so he could look her directly in the eyes.

“What, right now?” Lily managed weakly, and then the next moment, she was back in the graveyard.

The experience was similar to viewing a Pensieve memory, but instead of an objective third-person perspective, she was back in her own head, looking through her own eyes. She could sense the pain and disorientation she’d been feeling at the time, but it didn’t affect her “current” self, the Lily who was now watching.

In the memory, she’d just been popped out of whatever it was that had transported her from the floor of the Department of Mysteries to this unfamiliar cemetery. As her past self noticed the duelling wizards, the weight of the situation she was witnessing came bearing down on her. At least, if she was as far in the past as Dumbledore suggested, it couldn’t be a younger Al she was looking at. It would have to be--

Wait. Was she watching her _father_? Harry Potter? And was he dueling _Voldemort_?

“That’s correct, Miss Potter,” Dumbledore’s voice said in her mind, and she would have jumped in shock if she’d been in control of her body. “I have already heard young Mister Potter’s version of events, and I’m afraid you have joined us right at the start of the Dark Wizard Voldemort’s return to power.”

She watched as her appearance disrupted the gathered wizards in black -- Death Eaters, she remembered from History of Magic -- and she noticed this time that they were all wearing white masks, as well. But the ringing in her ears couldn’t be helped; their voices simply never made it into her memory, and so could not be retrieved.

She watched as the young Harry dodged his way over to the other boy. “Cedric Diggory,” Dumbledore’s voice informed her. “A tragic loss.” Lily shrugged mentally; the name meant nothing to her. Harry grabbed Cedric, turned, summoned the cup, and then saw her as she staggered towards him.

And then Voldemort’s Killing Curse struck him, and Lily watched him fall, again, aghast and confused.

“I thought so,” Dumbledore’s voice murmured.

She was no less confused by the time the memory reached its conclusion, Lily summoning the cup and the three of them whirling away to the grass. Since she was still limited to her own perceptions, Lily couldn’t see any better this time where they were, or why it was so loud, though she guessed the cup had taken her to Hogwarts.

And then it was over, and she was sitting, tied to her chair, sweating and breathing heavily like she’d just come out of one of her old Physical Conditioning classes. Dumbledore was looking pensive. Snape still wasn’t looking at her.

“I do believe that confirms my theory,” Dumbledore said softly.

“Is he really dead?” Lily demanded. “You just said you’d heard ‘his version’ -- _didn’t he die?_ ”

“Young Harry is not dead, in fact,” Dumbledore told her, sounding entirely too cheerful. “Something of Voldemort’s own doing inadvertently protected the boy.” He looked at her curiously for a moment, but refrained from asking whatever was on his mind. Instead, he said, “Of course, that will not be the story once we leave this room.”

That got Snape’s attention. “Whatever you’re planning, Albus,” he said, “I do not approve.”

“I would expect no less, Severus,” Dumbledore said with a small smile. “Nevertheless.”

“I don’t understand,” Lily said, which was of course the truth.

“As you may recall from viewing your memory,” Dumbledore said -- what an awkward way to say _remember_  -- “Harry did see you before he was struck down. He suspected you to be a hallucination until the moment he learned that you had also been seen by nearly the entire population of Hogwarts, plus no few representatives of the Ministry of Magic, when he and Cedric returned with you in tow.”

“Sorry,” Lily said, uncertain why but feeling it was appropriate.

“Given the circumstances,” Dumbledore continued, “quite a lot of people believe that Lily Potter-- _née_ Evans, your grandmother-- has returned from the dead.” He face turned oddly calculating. “It is my intention to foster that belief.”

Lily just stared at him. The very idea was absurd -- people didn’t just _come back from the dead_ \-- and even her potion-assisted cooperation could only stretch so far. He looked like he was expecting a response, though, so she had to say something. “But he even told you,” she said, meaning Snape, “I don’t actually look that much like her.”

“You’re close enough, on the whole,” Dumbledore said, unfazed. Glancing at his companion, he added, “There are very few people who would ever notice, much less care about, a slightly incorrect shade of red hair. As for your eyes…” He considered the eyes in question for a moment, then pointed his wand right at them.

Lily felt her eyes burn terribly. She screamed and scrunched them shut, pulling at the bonds tying her to the chair, desperate to get her hands free so she could put more pressure on her eyelids, or maybe to gouge her eyes right out if it would help. Then, suddenly, the burning abated.

She took a few deep breaths before she relaxed even slightly. Slowly, she opened her eyes, but had to blink away a few tears before she could see properly.

Snape was staring at her with an unfathomable expression. Dumbledore just looked pleased.

“What did you do?” she whispered, unable to break through the Calming Draught to scream it at him the way she wanted to.

In answer, he twirled his wand and conjured a mirror, which he held in front of her.

Of course that’s what he’d done.

Her eyes were green.

It was her first chance to look at the rest of herself, too, since the Department of Mysteries. A few unkind descriptions flittered through her head at the look of her sorry state, but ‘banged up’ and ‘a right mess’ seemed the most appropriate. There was a large, visible bruise on her forehead, and a cut on her left cheek; she could remember receiving neither, but now that she knew they were there she could feel them start to throb. Her hair -- _too orange_ to be her grandmother, according to Snape -- was matted and absolutely filthy; it was a wonder the Potions professor could see her hair color at all. Her Auror robes, which she wore with pride, were torn in several places. Oh, and there was blood spattered all over her face and front.

It wasn’t her blood. The memory came back in a rush -- Al, her older brother, kneeling over her to free her from the floor. The piercing curse that got him right through the chest. His blood spurting over her, until she had managed to put him in stasis. Stasis that would do him no good, surrounded alone by the demonstrably malicious red-robes. She had left him to die.

And now she had his green eyes.

She felt the tears coming back, but from a different pain this time. She blinked them away just as furiously.

She looked at the two professors still standing there. One the famous Headmaster of Hogwarts for decades, one of the greatest wizards who ever lived. The Albus for whom Al was named. The other, a future Headmaster of Hogwarts, though from what she could dimly remember, under less than auspicious circumstances. Her brother was his namesake too. How ironic, that they were standing here before her together, when she had so failed to protect him.

Or… she _would_ fail. In thirty-odd years. Her head hurt.

“I’d like to be alone for a while,” she told them, and wondered if the potions in her system were starting to wear off.

To her relief, Dumbledore did not protest. “Take as long as you need,” he said, and the two of them stepped back around her to the exit. There was a murmur, and just before the door clicked shut, she felt her bonds loosen. She could finally pull her hands free.

She just hugged herself and allowed herself to cry.


	2. Dumbledore's Plan is Brilliant and Foolproof

Like usual, when Lily woke up, she was instantly alert and aware of her surroundings. 

Unlike usual, she had no idea where she was. 

She was in Hogwarts -- she remembered that. Far in the past, during her father’s school years. She’d talked to Albus Dumbledore. Hadn’t really talked to Severus Snape, but he’d been there too. 

She remembered all that. But she didn’t know what _room_ she was in. 

It was small, with little more than a bed, a dresser, and two doors. Torches provided the only light; there were no windows. It wasn’t the room she’d been interrogated in, which meant she’d been moved as she slept. At least they hadn’t dared undress her -- she was still in her torn, bloody Auror robes. 

She had too much angry energy to just lie there, so she swung out of bed and started pacing around the small room. The potions were all out of her system now, she was very sure, and she was _rather put out_ that they had dosed her with all that to begin with. By all means have them at hand -- standard Auror interrogation procedure recommended liberal use of Calming Draught with potentially volatile suspects, and mild truth serums were allowed when authorized by the Director of the DMLE, but dosing her with everything at once, before they’d even revived her? 

She jerked one of the doors open as if to march out and give Dumbledore a piece of her mind then and there, but stopped short when she saw that it was not the exit, but rather the bathroom, which included a real bathtub. A bath sounded like a great idea, frankly; she was more than willing to soak in some hot water while she debated her next move. 

So, a few minutes later, she lay back and let out a deep breath. She hadn’t realized how sore she was, or how tense, and a bath was exactly what she’d needed. She was more relaxed already. Still, she couldn’t just doze off -- she had plans she had to make. 

The first question she had to answer was: How had she ended up in the past? Well, no, she reconsidered as she scrubbed -- that actually didn’t matter except in how it would inform the answer to the second question, which was, how would she get back? 

As much as it annoyed her, realistically speaking, the person most likely to be able to answer either question was of course Albus Dumbledore. It wasn’t like she even knew anyone else to ask, anyway. 

She started on her hair; it would take some work. Her eyes were still green -- she’d checked in the mirror before stepping into the tub -- but her hair, at least, was still her own. She was glad Dumbledore had dismissed Snape’s concerns. Still, she privately agreed with the dour Potions Master; her hair really was much more Weasley than it was Evans, based on the pictures she’d seen of her grandmother. She’d probably have to take matters into her own hands if she wanted to fool anyone who’d known the older Lily Potter personally. 

She shook her head, then dunked herself under the water. It wouldn’t matter unless she actually agreed to go along with Dumbledore’s ridiculous plan. Right? 

Ignoring her uncertainty in the matter, she got out of the bath and dried herself off. Only then did she realize that her only option for clothing was the damaged and dirty outfit she’d just taken off. In fact… in fact, those robes were all she owned in all the world. She didn’t even have her wand. 

But she was in Hogwarts, where anything was possible if you knew who to ask. 

She wrapped the towels around herself, then called out, “Chippy!” 

There was a long pause -- long enough for her to mentally smack herself on the forehead. She was more than thirty years in the past; there was no guarantee any of the elves she remembered were already at Hogwarts. 

But, eventually, there was a pop, and a familiar short gray creature with floppy ears peered at her with a confused expression. “Missus Potter is calling for Chippy?” he said. 

Lily had never given much thought to the aging of house-elves before, but as she looked at his bulbous eyes, she could tell that he was… young. Not a child by any means, but maybe the house-elf equivalent of a young adult. He had a lot of living to do before he would become the efficient and consummately respectful elf she remembered from her own Hogwarts days. 

“Please call me Lily,” she told him. “Could you do me a favor and find me some spare robes? I’m afraid I don’t have anything to wear.” 

The young house-elf puffed himself up a bit. “Of course, missy Lily!” he said, and he disappeared with another pop. She barely had time to sit on the bed before he was back again with an armful of clothing. 

“These should be fitting you,” Chippy said. 

“Thank you,” Lily said. She took the robes from him and laid them out on the bed. Then, after a few moments of nothing happening, Chippy got the message that she wasn’t going to dress in front of him. With a small squeak, he disappeared. 

Smiling to herself, Lily pulled on her new robe. It was a simple black robe with no adornments, very similar to the one Snape had been wearing. Hopefully it wasn’t actually one of his, as entertaining as that might have been. It would get her through the castle, as long as nobody looked too closely at her face. 

It occurred to her that she had no idea what time it was. It was either the 25th or 26th of June, depending on whether she’d slept past midnight. It could easily be the middle of the day or the middle of the night; she simply couldn’t tell from inside the little bedroom. 

Rather than call Chippy back yet again just to answer questions, she decided to stretch her legs a bit. But first, just in case, she cast a weak, wandless Notice-Me-Not on herself. Hopefully it would be enough to stop anyone who saw her from realizing who she was -- or who she resembled. 

She was pretty glad now that her first attempt to storm out had just led her to the bath. She would’ve been quite the sight, looking like she’d just come out of a battle, walking out potentially into a crowd of schoolchildren with no regard for subtlety... 

But this time, clean, presentable, and lightly warded, she opened the second door, and stepped out into the hallways of Hogwarts. 

The lights were dim, but not off. That was actually very convenient, because it told her exactly what time it was -- it was after curfew, but still early enough that Prefects would be making rounds. That was an excellent time to go sneaking about the castle. Now, if she just knew where in the castle she was, she could figure out how to get to where she wanted to go. 

She picked a direction and set off, keeping an eye on the portraits on the walls. Many of the painted figures were dozing, though some were eyeing her curiously. She didn’t know if her Notice-Me-Not even worked on portraits, but either way, none of them seemed inclined to make a fuss about her presence. 

But there was another reason she was paying attention to the portraits, and she was rewarded when she spotted a particular thick red frame with oddly warped scrolls on the corners. The portraits were some of the most reliable landmarks in the castle, and probably wouldn’t have changed much even in thirty years. Based on that memorable red frame, Lily now knew where she was. She was down the hall from the hospital wing. 

Indeed, the double doors were coming up on her left. She paused just outside -- then, on an impulse she couldn’t quite explain, she carefully eased the doors open and peeked inside. 

The light in the hospital wing was even lower than in the hall, but it was not empty. The bed furthest from the entrance had its curtains pulled shut, so she couldn’t see who was there, but she was much more interested in the closest bed. Two students, a boy and a girl, were sitting at the bedside, and the bed itself was occupied by none other than the sleeping form of one Harry Potter. 

The boy and girl beside him -- Lily knew them. They were, without question, the fifteen-year-old Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. 

Her knees felt weak. It was one thing to talk to men who were supposed to be dead. It was entirely another to run into younger versions of her aunt and uncle. She _really was_ thirty years in the past. That _really was_ her father on the bed. Even though she thought she’d accepted it, every fresh reminder felt like a new blow to the gut. 

Without thinking of what she was doing, she stepped forward into the hospital wing and allowed the door to close behind her. At the sound, Hermione looked up from her lap -- she’d been reading a book, of _course_ she’d been reading a book -- and looked right at her, a challenging yet cautious expression on her face. A moment later, Ron looked over too. 

Lily dropped her Notice-Me-Not, and watched their eyes widen in shock. Ron actually squeaked, but managed to contain himself enough that all he said was, “It’s really you!” 

“It’s really me,” Lily agreed softly, since it was meaningless phrase. She stepped closer, and looked down at Harry on the bed. He looked surprisingly peaceful, breathing calmly and gently. “How is he?” 

Hermione shut the book on her lap. It was too dim for Lily to read the title, but it was a large tome, probably checked out from the library. “He’s doing very well, considering,” she said, a little sharply. 

“Considering?” Lily repeated, meeting her brown eyes. 

“He was hit by another Killing Curse,” Hermione said. “He _survived_ another Killing Curse.” Something in her tone gave Lily pause. The young witch wasn’t shocked or confused, she was almost… accusatory. 

“He didn’t even get a new scar this time,” Ron added. 

Lily’s eyes snapped down to Harry’s forehead. She knew about his lightning-bolt scar, of course, but during her lifetime it had never been very pronounced. A thin pale line; a novelty, nothing more. But she knew that the scar had a history, a significance that had something to do with Voldemort, and that the scar had been much more visible during his childhood. She had seen photos, had marveled at the difference. 

Maybe it was the shadows that fell across his face, but Lily didn’t think the scar looked that bad, now that she could examine it in person. 

Hermione crossed her arms. “Do you know something we don’t about the Killing Curse? Did you do something when he was a baby to make him… resistant, somehow?” 

For a moment Lily was very confused, until she remembered who they thought she was. How typical of Aunt Hermione, she thought -- the girl thinks she’s talking to her friend’s dead mother and the first thing she does is ask after unknown magic. “I really couldn’t say,” she said, though she knew without looking that this was not going to satisfy the teenaged Hermione. “You probably know more of what happened that night than I do.” 

“What?” Ron said, but she ignored him in favor of giving Hermione a significant glance. 

“Maybe it’s best if you don’t mention my visit,” Lily said directly to the brown-haired girl. Then, ignoring Ron’s startled “Wait!”, she turned and made her escape, before she got pulled too directly into a discussion about events she couldn’t possibly know anything about. 

She really had to talk to Dumbledore. 

Fortunately, she knew where she was now, and so it wasn’t hard to navigate through the castle to reach the Headmaster’s Office. It was actually a little weird to think of it as such; throughout her life Hogwarts had been under the care of a Headmistress instead. Two, actually, since Professor McGonagall had retired in her fifth year. 

In any event, now that she was staring the gargoyle in the face, she realized she didn’t have the password. 

“Er… Hi,” she said lamely. “You know, I’ve always wondered whether the Headmaster can hear what people say to you.” She peered at the gargoyle for any sign of movement. “If so, Professor Dumbledore, I’d like to have a word with you.” 

“A conversation that would benefit us both, I think.” 

Lily whirled around, raising her hands into a defensive casting position. Her magic flowed down her arms and sparked between her fingers, ready to cast, regardless of her lack of wand -- and then she realized just who she was staring down. Blushing a bit at how easily she had startled, she lowered her hands. “Sorry, sir.” 

Albus Dumbledore smiled genially at her from down the hall, then swept forward to stand beside her in front of the gargoyle. “You are not one of my students, Lily. No need to stand on formality.” 

As if he hadn’t been calling her Miss Potter last time they spoke? Well, she had no qualms about being less polite to Dumbledore. For now, all she said was, “Right.” 

Dumbledore put one hand on the gargoyle’s head. After a second or two, it slid aside, revealing the stairs up to his office. “After you, please,” he said, gesturing for Lily to lead the way. 

She did, picturing as she ascended the office as she’d known it -- cozy and tidy, with a few personal effects and lots of books. By contrast, she discovered, Dumbledore’s office was full to bursting with… gizmos. 

She forced herself to relax as she took a seat across from the Headmaster’s desk. These were not the same devices she had spent so many nights at work staring at. There was no need to get upset just because some of them looked a little similar. She should save her indignation for the things that truly merited it, like the potions, which she had certainly not forgotten about. 

A bit of whistling diverted her attention. Off to the side, a real living phoenix with golden-red plumage chirped at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back. 

“Fawkes,” Dumbledore said, clearly an introduction. 

“He’s beautiful,” Lily said. 

Dumbledore inclined his head, accepting the compliment gracefully on Fawkes’s behalf even as the phoenix puffed up his chest. But then the old man leaned forward, and his kindly-grandpa demeanor was replaced instantly by that of a calculating tactician. 

“Lily, we have much to discuss,” he said. “I would like to begin with our mutual acknowledgement of a few facts, to ensure we are, as they say, on the same page.” He paused just long enough for Lily to nod. “First, we agree that the date is currently the twenty-fifth of June, nineteen ninety five?” 

“...Yes,” Lily said. She did genuinely believe it, but it still sounded weird to hear it said out loud. 

“Second,” Dumbledore continued, “we agree that you arrived here after being transported, against your will, by means you do not understand, from what I would consider the future?” 

“That’s right,” Lily said. She really couldn’t understand the way her fight in the Department of Mysteries had ended -- she had never experienced or even heard of anything like it before. And she certainly would never have consented to being sent to the past. She hoped this was leading up to the part where Dumbledore explained what had happened and how to reverse it, and sent her home. 

“And last,” Dumbledore said, “we agree that neither of us has the slightest idea how to return you to your proper time?”

Oh. 

Lily opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She forced herself to swallow and looked over at Fawkes, who trilled softly at the attention. “Okay,” she managed. 

So much for the old Headmaster's reputation as the greatest wizard ever, she thought, but even as she thought it she knew she was being uncharitable. Even Albus Dumbledore couldn't have all the answers all the time. She knew that already, from the stories. 

Dumbledore nodded gently, then continued. “It is an open question,” he said, “whether your appearance here is as part of a closed time loop, or whether we are now in a new timeline, separate from your own past.” 

Lily looked back at him. “How could this be part of a closed loop?” she asked. “I don’t know the story of Voldemort’s return very well, but I think I would have noticed if part of it went ‘ _And then Harry’s mum came back from the dead._ ’ That’s what everybody thinks now, right?” 

“It is theoretically possible,” Dumbledore said, “if, perhaps, Harry knew the truth, and ensured that all renditions of the story you were exposed to removed any mention of your past-- or future-- involvement. But,” he added, holding up a hand, “I confess I do not find this explanation likely. It is much more likely that you are in a different timeline than the one you knew.” 

“What does that mean?” Lily asked warily. 

“It means we can be slightly less circumspect in the choices we make,” Dumbledore said with a hint of cheer. “And it means that it should not be a great existential danger, I think, if you share your knowledge of the future.” 

“Oh,” Lily said. She thought back to sleepy days in History of Magic, to hearing her father’s stories when she was a little girl. “Like I said, I don’t know the story very well. Just the broad strokes, really. It was all long before I was born. Actually,” she said, a little primly, “I was born almost exactly ten years after Voldemort’s final defeat.” 

Dumbledore leaned back a bit. “In nineteen ninety eight, then,” he said. 

Lily was surprised, until she remembered being asked her birthdate during her interrogation. “That’s right,” she said. “I don’t remember a lot of dates, but the Battle of Hogwarts was on the second of May, nineteen ninety eight.” 

“Would have been,” Dumbledore corrected absentmindedly. He sat and thought for a few moments, then blinked, and his attention returned to Lily. “Have you put any thought into my proposal, Lily?” 

“Your _proposal_?” Lily repeated. “You mean the one where I actively impersonate my dead grandmother?” 

“The very same,” Dumbledore said with a small smile. 

“I’m not exactly a fan of it,” Lily said. “Not least because I know almost nothing about her.” 

Dumbledore dismissed this concern with a wave of his hand. “Your ignorance of the small details can be explained through memory loss. We can say that you remember, to use your phrase, the _broad strokes_ \-- who you are, what Hogwarts is, that Harry is your son, for example-- but everything else was lost, as a consequence of dying only to return thirteen years later.” 

Lily made a face when Dumbledore said that Harry was her son -- he was her _father_ , and her mind outright rebelled at trying to reverse that relationship. “Would people believe that?” she asked. 

“Who among them could say they know better?” Dumbledore responded with a small lilt to his voice. “Further, the explanation for Lily Potter’s return from the grave is practically ready-made.” 

“Do tell,” Lily said, feeling a new headache coming on. 

“Thirteen years ago, Lily Potter sacrificed herself to save her son, Harry, protecting him from Voldemort’s curse but binding the two of them together. When Voldemort used Harry in the ritual to grant himself new form last night, that old magic recovered the balance by granting new form to Lily, as well.” 

He said this with the weight of such wisdom and conviction that Lily found herself nodding along, as if _of course, that makes perfect sense_ before breaking off, reminding herself furiously that it was all made up. 

“And when people ask how exactly I bound myself to Voldemort and saved Harry?” she asked, thinking of Hermione, who had already asked. 

“Alas,” Dumbledore said, “your knowledge of the ritual was lost with the rest of your memories.” 

Lily let out a long breath. “This still seems like a very complicated story,” she said. “Do you really think this is the best choice?” 

Dumbledore folded his hands and looked at her steadily for a moment. “Hiding you away is not an option-- too many people have seen you already, and the Ministry is demanding I hand you to them. Sharing the truth is not an option-- while I do not believe your knowledge of the future will trigger any catastrophic paradoxes, it could still be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.” 

“But surely we could just make up a story that’s… slightly less outrageous?” Lily said. 

“Sometimes,” Dumbledore said, “the more outrageous the story, the easier it is to make people believe.” 

Lily shook her head slowly, then looked over at the phoenix who stood off to the side, preening on his perch. “What do you think, Fawkes?” 

Fawkes cocked his head to one side, then humored her by singing for a few seconds. Lily felt a wave of confidence and comfort wash over her. She supposed that was as clear an answer as she could hope for. 

“All right,” she said heavily, turning back to Dumbledore. “I’ll play along. But--” she added, leaning forward, “--in that case, you have to help me fix my hair.”

 

* * *

 

“You should know,” Lily said, examining herself in the mirror, “I already saw Hermione and Ron. Just briefly, in the hospital wing.” 

Dumbledore had in fact helped her “fix” her hair. It was a bit darker now, and longer, and not so relentlessly straight. It wasn’t an exact copy of the old Lily’s hair, but it was close enough to bridge the distance with hair-care charms and potions. Or to not bother, and blame the same for the difference. 

She stared into her new green eyes and sighed. All together, she looked just different enough that her reflection felt odd, but not so different that she felt like she was someone else. The same Lily Potter, just with a makeover and her brother’s eyes. 

“Harry was asleep?” Dumbledore asked from behind his desk. He was sorting through papers about something or other. 

“Sound asleep,” Lily confirmed. Then she turned to him and said, “Hermione asked me how he survived the Killing Curse again. How _did_ he?” 

Dumbledore glanced up at her, and his eyes definitely twinkled. “Your grandmother invoked old, powerful magic when she sacrificed herself to save Harry. Voldemort’s attempt to kill him thirteen years ago had consequences he did not foresee.” 

“That’s not an answer,” Lily said. 

“The next time you see Harry, he will likely not be asleep,” Dumbledore said. 

It was a blatant evasion, but it worked. “I know,” Lily said, grimacing. “I don’t know what to say to him. I’m not his mother, and pretending to be…” She didn’t think she could do it -- look Harry in the eye and claim to be his mother, miraculously back from the grave. “Can’t he, at least, know the truth?” 

“Certainly not,” Dumbledore said with mild alarm. “If Harry learns you are his daughter, there’s no predicting his reaction. Everything could fall apart.” 

Lily rubbed her face. “I guess.” She looked around the office and said, “Is there somewhere I can go? Out of the castle? If I stay here I might run into him by accident.” Which would be pretty terrible -- she could just imagine the awkward confrontation, in some random corridor, surrounded by Harry’s classmates… No, she wanted to avoid that. 

Dumbledore considered for a moment, then said, “Perhaps. There are some who would be willing to shelter Lily Potter for a time.” He stood, perhaps to escort her out, but one of the gizmos in the room suddenly started steaming. Lily flinched, but Dumbledore just looked over and sighed. “Ah,” he said. 

“What is it?” Lily asked. 

“It seems I am not free to leave the castle tonight,” the Headmaster said. “I have matters to attend to here. But, perhaps…” He considered the objects on his desk, then selected a small paperweight in the shape of a knight in chess. He tapped it with his wand and murmured, “ _Portus._ ” All the while, the steaming gizmo only increased in intensity, adding a shrill whistle like a boiling teapot, except much more grating. 

“Where are you sending me?” Lily asked warily. 

Instead of answering, Dumbledore lifted his wand again. In a flash of silvery light, two phoenix Patronuses burst forth and swooped out through the window -- which was closed, but what did they care -- one after the other. Only then did he turn back to her. “Keep your cover if you can,” he told her, handing her the knight. “Remember the memory loss. I am sending you to two of Lily Potter’s closest friends.” 

“You’re what?” Lily said, now very alarmed, but before she could demand more of an explanation she felt the pull of the Portkey dragging her away. 

The world whirled around her for a few seconds before she slammed back down; she teetered over and fell to her knees, cursing Dumbledore all the while. Then she pushed up to her feet, brushing some of her longer, wavier hair out of her face, and examined her new surroundings. 

She was on a dark, quiet street lined with small single-storey houses. There were no streetlamps nearby, and if any of the houses had any lights on inside, they didn’t show it. Each house did have a small yard, just a patch really of two or three square meters, and most of them were overgrown with weeds. All told, there was no real evidence that anyone lived on this street at all. 

At least, until the closest front door jolted open and someone poked his head out to stare at her. Lily stared right back -- all she could see in the dark was that it was a man with shaggy black hair and a rather intense expression. 

“Lily?” he said, sounding half-strangled, then pushed the door the rest of the way open. “Well, come on, get in here!” 

Assuming that this was her intended destination, Lily nodded and hurried over. The man stepped back to let her in, and waited for her to shut the door before launching forward to grab her in an overwhelming embrace. 

“Wait--” Lily managed before the man’s too-enthusiastic hug squeezed the air out of her. Her arms were trapped at her sides; she couldn’t have hugged him back even if she’d had any inclination to. He seemed to realize this, since after a few seconds he let her go and stepped back. He made a small movement, and an oil lamp on the wall came to life, illuminating the room for the first time. 

The living room was about what she’d expected, based on the street outside. The old, fraying couch had a visible sag to its cushions, and the carpet had worn down to the hard floor below in a few patches. The walls were a mottled off-white, except for the brick fireplace. At least everything seemed clean. And the man, who was watching her expectantly -- he was thin, with slightly sunken cheeks, but his eyes were bright, and Lily was pretty sure she’d seen a picture of him at some point in her past. 

Of course, that wasn’t entirely helpful -- she’d seen pictures of a lot of people. 

“Thanks for letting me in,” Lily said. “Did Dumbledore warn you I was coming?” 

The man snorted inelegantly. “Not much of a warning. ‘I’m sending you a houseguest. Treat her well.’ He could have mentioned it was you!” 

Lily shrugged, feeling increasingly uncomfortable that she didn’t know who this man was. He’d known the old Lily, and he’d been fooled by her appearance -- it seemed almost cruel to tell him she didn’t even know his name. 

But wouldn’t it be crueler to wait? 

Just then, her hesitation was broken by the sound of the back door. Another man entered the house, passed through whatever room was back there, and stopped short in the doorway into the living room. He was stockier than the first man, with sandy brown hair and threadbare robes, and he eyed the two of them suspiciously. “Sirius,” he said, “step back, please.” 

 _Ah --_ now that was enough to go on. Sirius meant Sirius Black, the man who gave her eldest brother his middle name. And if he was Sirius Black, the new arrival was almost definitely Remus Lupin, the father of Teddy Lupin -- but not yet, she realized. Not for nearly three years yet. 

“Remus,” Sirius said, looking back with a frown, “it’s Lily! Didn’t you see the _Prophet_? She’s really back!” 

“That’s not Lily,” Remus interrupted coldly. He had his wand out now, not threateningly but ready in case she made a move. She made sure to keep her hands open and away from her robes -- not that she had a wand to go for, anyway. 

“What do you mean?” Sirius twisted back to peer more closely at Lily, and he didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. “Dumbledore said--” 

“Step _back_ ,” Remus insisted, and Sirius acquiesced, taking a step away while sending her an apologetic look. Remus then took a step forward, and pointed his wand at Lily. “ _Reparifarge_ ,” he said strongly. 

Nothing happened. That spell, used for reverting unstable or incomplete transfigurations, was much too weak to undo the work of a Transfiguration expert like Dumbledore. 

“ _Visus Coactus_ ,” Remus tried next. Still nothing. “ _Revelio._ ” That one did get a reaction -- Lily’s hair shortened and straightened. 

“Hey!” she cried, putting a hand to her head. She would have been perfectly happy going through life never knowing what it felt like to have her hair retract itself back under her scalp. She didn’t know if its color was also reverted. It would be a bit of a blatant giveaway if she checked. 

“I thought so,” Remus said, then held his wand up pointed at the ceiling. “ _Lux Veracis_ ,” he said, and a white ball of light appeared at the tip. “Sirius, say something false,” he commanded. 

“I am a hundred and three years old,” Sirius said obligingly. The ball of light on Remus’s wand turned blood-red. Without being prompted, Sirius followed with, “I was sorted into Gryffindor,” and the ball turned blue. 

Lily understood -- it was a simple truth-checking charm. She wondered how it handled opinions and edge-cases. 

“So,” Remus said to Lily. “Who are you really?” 

“I’m Lily Potter,” she answered, and was glad to see the light remain blue. “Why do you think I’m not?” 

“Lily’s dead,” Remus said. “How are you fooling the charm?” 

“I’m not fooling the charm,” she said. “My name is really Lily Potter.” 

“Why was your hair transfigured?” Remus asked. 

Lily eyed the blue ball of light and considered her words. “I convinced Dumbledore to help me make it look more like it does in the pictures, so people would be less confused when they saw me.” 

“So Dumbledore knows who you really are?” 

She rolled her eyes, nice and blatantly. “Yes, Dumbledore knows who I am.” 

Sirius drew himself up slowly, shifting from excited to suspicious over the course of a few seconds. “Is your hair the only part of you that Dumbledore changed?” 

Oh, that was a good question, Lily thought. Instead of answering, she said, “I thought you believed me.” 

“You look like Lily,” he said slowly, “but you don’t sound like Lily, and you’re certainly not _acting_ like Lily.” She noticed that he was holding his wand now, too. 

“Dumbledore wants me to say,” Lily told them, “that I am suffering from severe memory loss.” 

“Dumbledore is often more concerned with convenience than truth,” Sirius said darkly. 

Lily held her hands up in front of her chest, splayed open and facing out -- showing her lack of wand, but also prepared to cast a wandless shield if she had to. “Okay, look,” she said. “It was Dumbledore’s brilliant idea to send me here, and I’m not too married to this plan, but maybe we could all just cool down a bit? I promise I mean you no harm.” 

Remus glanced at his wand, which was still very solidly blue. “Say something obviously false,” he demanded, “so we know you’re not just immune to the charm.” 

Lily shrugged, and said, “I was born in this very house.” 

The light turned red. Remus scowled and pointed at the saggy couch. “Sit,” he said. 

Lily moved in and sat, sinking deep into the cushion. It would be hard to stand up again. It didn’t escape her notice that both men remained standing. 

“Okay,” Remus said, still holding up his wand with the _Lux Veracis_ light. “Talk.” 

Lily looked at the two of them for a few seconds. “The story that Dumbledore wants people to believe,” she said, “is that when Voldemort did whatever ritual to give himself a new body, _old magic_ also brought Lily Potter back from the dead.” 

The two men glanced at each other. “That’s in line with the _Prophet_ ’s speculation,” Sirius admitted. 

“I don’t actually know what magic brought me here,” Lily continued, “so I can’t say whether Voldemort’s ritual is related or not. I am, however, reasonably sure that I have never been dead.” 

Sirius made a circular _get-on-with-it_ gesture with his hand. “You haven’t told us who you are, yet.” 

Lily looked at the two of them for a few seconds, hesitating over just how much to share. Dumbledore’s plan had proven to be a non-starter, but that didn’t necessarily mean it would be best to go the opposite extreme and spill everything, even with Remus’s truth charm keeping her honest. “I am not the Lily Potter you knew at Hogwarts, who died thirteen years ago,” she said carefully. “I am… a different Lily Potter. I think part of why Dumbledore wants me to pretend I’m _your_ Lily Potter is because it’s much simpler to explain, compared to the truth, which even I don’t fully understand.” 

There was a long pause as the two wizards took this in. “So you’re like… an alternate universe version of Lily?” Sirius said, half to himself. He shook his head in amazement, then asked, “Who else knows about this?” 

“Dumbledore interrogated me,” Lily said, a little bitterly. “And Severus Snape was there, too. They both know the truth.” Sirius grimaced at hearing Snape’s name, which was interesting. 

“How old are you?” Remus asked abruptly. 

“Twenty-one,” Lily answered. 

“Then you’ve already had Harry, back home,” he said, phrasing it like a certainty, but she could tell it was actually a question. 

“Ah, no,” she said. “Still very single, thank you. No children in sight.” 

“Single?” Sirius repeated, startled. “Then you’re-- not with James?” 

She looked at him, and a devilish idea popped into her head. It was an amazing opportunity to do one of her very favorite things -- cause maximum chaos by telling carefully-selective truth. It was a skill she’d cultivated during her years in Slytherin, and though it wasn’t really the sort of thing that went over well in the Auror corps, she’d never quite given it up entirely. And here she was, her every word verified by _Lux Veracis_ , and if she happened to choose the truth that would cause the greatest misunderstanding, well... 

So she said, “I knew a James Potter, but I certainly wasn’t ‘with’ him. He’s my brother.” 

Sirius boggled at her, and Remus wasn’t much better off, standing slack-jawed in shock as the light from his wand remained solidly blue. 

And in the silence, they all heard a soft scuffling coming from the front door. 

Lily heaved herself off the sunken sofa cushion and knelt on the ground, keeping the ratty old furniture between herself and the door. Remus also had his wand up and at the ready, the truth charm fading away as he shifted his concentration. Sirius lagged behind by a few seconds, but he took up a quick defensive stance soon enough. 

Lily reached forward a bit. _Homenum Revelio,_ she thought, and unlike at the Department of Mysteries, the spell worked perfectly. “One at the door,” she reported. She glanced up at the ceiling, then back at Remus. “Plus two on the roof. Were you expecting a party?” 

“Sirius,” Remus said calmly, “you didn’t do something stupid like open my front door and shout into the street, did you?” 

“Was I supposed to just leave her out there?” Sirius retorted. 

If Remus thought so, he didn’t get a chance to say it. The front door was suddenly blasted in, shooting across the room and embedding itself in the wall opposite. Lily was very glad they’d moved to the couch, or they all would’ve been slightly squashed. 

A young man with brown hair and a scraggly beard sauntered in through the open doorway. “Come out to play, Mr. Wolf!” he shouted -- and then he noticed the three occupants arrayed against him. He froze for just a second too long. 

“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” Lily whispered, then snagged the man’s wand as it flew through the air towards her. As Remus sent a stunner at him -- he ducked in a panic -- Lily took the time to give her new wand a test wave. It -- it didn’t feel great. This was not a wand that had any compatibility with her at all. Considering how difficult it was to cast wandless magic while holding a bad wand, she was actually worse off with this piece of junk than she was before. 

A series of thumps from the ceiling caught her attention and reminded her that the guy in front of them was not their only threat. He wasn’t much of one anyway; by the time Lily had tossed his wand away in disgust, Remus and Sirius had him stunned, bound, and with little pustules popping up all over his face. 

But the men on the roof -- after a moment there was a horrific crash, and two holes appeared in the ceiling. Sirius cast a quick shield to protect them from the falling debris, but the men up top stuck their wand arms down through the holes and, aiming seemingly at random, bellowed in tandem, “ _Sanarguentia_!” 

Maybe their aim hadn’t mattered -- there was a flash of silver light, and Lily felt an odd tingling sensation sweep through her body. It didn’t seem to have any lasting effect that she noticed, until a moment later when Remus collapsed with a howl of pain. Sirius yelled something and bent over his friend in concern, and so it fell to Lily to deal with the two assailants who were still “safely” on the roof. 

Well, she could fix that. Reaching up with both hands, she grabbed at the empty air, shouted “ _Deprimo_!”, and yanked down hard. The roof buckled in under the feet of the two intruders and they found themselves falling into the living room. Before they even reached the floor, though, Lily followed up with a _Depulso_ that sent them flying sideways until they hit the wall. 

She stunned one and bound the other. He struggled against the conjured ropes as she carefully made her way across the mess of a room, but he was apparently helpless without his wand, which she hadn’t even had to disarm from him -- he’d outright dropped it in the confusion of being tossed through the air like a ragdoll. 

She bent to pick it up, hoping it would be better than the last one she’d taken, but no such luck. Or, well, it didn’t actively make her feel sick, so it _was_ an improvement, but it wouldn’t do her any good, either. Still, she kept it for the intimidation factor -- she stuck it into the man’s neck and asked in her best bad-cop voice, “Who are you?” 

“I-I’m just after the werewolf,” he said in a near panic. “Doing-- doing my part to keep society safe, you know?” 

“Werewolf?” Lily asked, and then remembered, oh yes, Remus was a werewolf. She knew because Teddy had mentioned it once or twice. Probably her father had too, but he said a lot of things she hadn’t bothered to retain. 

“Yes!” the man exclaimed, seizing onto her apparent ignorance like a lifeline. “That man, he’s a werewolf! The Blood-Silvering Curse proved it!” 

“Blood-Silvering?” Lily repeated, eyes wide, and turned to Sirius, who was still tending to the fallen Remus. “Is he okay?” 

“He will be if we act fast,” Sirius answered grimly. “The Blood-Silvering Curse is very Dark, very hard to counter. If I hadn’t been here, Remus would’ve been dead in minutes.” He stalked over to their terrified captive, who was staring at Sirius with an expression of warring awe and terror. 

“You’re Sirius Black!” he squawked. “P-Please, I didn’t know, I meant no offense against-- against _You-Know-Who_ \--” Sirius stepped in close, his face hard, and the man reduced to whimpers. 

As Lily watched, Sirius put his wand on the man’s chest, right over his heart, and said, “ _Flumen Depletura_.” The man immediately went rigid in shock. As Sirius drew his wand back and away, a viscous line of dark red fluid followed. 

“Is that…” Lily started to ask, struggling with how to tactfully phrase _are you pulling that man’s blood from his body_ , but Sirius interrupted her before she found quite the right words. 

“Could you grab a vial from the kitchen, please,” he said, much too calmly. 

Lily tossed the useless wand away and held out a hand. “ _Accio_ vial,” she said, and after some moments a medium-sized potions vial came zooming through the air and smacked into her palm. She held it out to Sirius. 

“I guess that works too,” he said, and took it with his left hand. The man’s blood still hung in a thin, unbroken line from the tip of Sirius’s wand to the center of the man’s chest. The man himself was still rigid and unresponsive, and his eyes were glassy. 

Sirius tapped the mouth of the vial with his wand, and the stream of blood began to flow in, filling it up. When it was at capacity, he tapped it again, ending the flow, and then released his bloodletting charm or whatever it was. 

“That’s very unpleasant,” Lily informed him, keeping an eye on the man to see if he would rouse again now that he wasn’t losing his blood. He just slumped over, though. 

“I don’t know if we were friends in your alternate universe or wherever you actually come from,” Sirius said brusquely as he kneeled back down next to Remus’s unconscious body, “but if you want to be friends here and now, you’ll help me save Remus’s life.” 

“What do you need me to do?” Lily asked. 

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this,” Sirius said, pausing for a moment to grimace, the same way he had a few minutes earlier. Then he looked up at Lily with dark, solemn eyes. “You need to convince Severus Snape to help a man he hates.”


	3. A Little Truth Can Go a Long Way

“How?” Lily demanded. “Snape is in Hogwarts, and I don’t have a way to get there!”

Sirius made a face at her, then jabbed his wand towards the back corner of the living room. The fireplace roared to life. “You can’t just floo into Hogwarts,” he told her, “but firecalls work just fine. Hogwarts, Severus Snape’s office.”

Looking at the mantel, Lily found the pot of floo powder, which thankfully had survived the carnage. She tossed a pinch into the flames, called out “Hogwarts, Severus Snape’s office,” and stuck her head in.

When her vision cleared, she was glad to see that the dour Potions Master was indeed in his office, though he was looking at her very crossly. Slowly, he set down the parchment he’d been holding. “Explain,” he said flatly.

In the back of her mind, Lily wondered that it was so easy to peek in on a Hogwarts professor. She’d always thought the fires in Hogwarts were all floo-restricted. Maybe that hadn’t been true thirty years ago -- now, rather. Or maybe calls from certain fireplaces were allowed to go through, and Remus and Sirius’s was on that list. In any event, those details weren’t important.

“I’m with Sirius and Remus,” she told him. “We were attacked by… werewolf-hunting vigilantes, I guess. We were hit by a Blood-Silvering Curse, and Remus needs your help.”

“Does he,” Snape drawled, and his eyes glinted oddly. He stood in a sudden, swift motion and moved to the bookcases on the far side of the office. “If the werewolf is not dead already, I assume Black was able to perform the counter-curse?”

“I assume so,” Lily said. “I’m not familiar with it.” She’d never even heard of the Blood-Silvering Curse before, which seemed like a major omission in her education, if you asked her.

“I imagine not,” Snape said. He pulled a book from the shelf and flipped through it until he found what he was looking for. “Tell Black that I will be along shortly,” he said as studied whatever was in the book. “And also that I shall enjoy him owing me a favor.”

Lily opened her mouth to object, then thought better of it. Many of her housemates in Slytherin had talked like that, ‘owing favors’ left and right for acts of common decency. Only the most obnoxious actually cared to keep track; most just went about posturing. But Lily had a feeling that Snape had meant it most sincerely.

She pulled her head out of the fire, shook away the dizziness, and said, “Snape is coming, but he says you owe him.”

“Of course he does,” Sirius said. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Remus’s head in his lap. Remus himself was still unconscious, and very pale, but showed no outward signs of suffering. “At least he agreed to come. If I’d asked, we would’ve just ended up shouting at each other.”

“Then why are we asking him, and not someone else?” Lily asked.

Sirius glanced at her. “What do you know about Severus Snape? Were you friends with him back home?”

Remembering that Sirius believed she was an alternate-universe version of Lily Evans, Lily considered how to answer. “I never met him, actually,” she said eventually. “But his reputation was… mixed.”

Sirius snorted. “I’m sure,” he said. “And he deserves every bit of it. But he’s also one of the best damn Potions Masters in Britain, and he knows more about Curses than most Dark wizards, too. If anyone can help Remus, it’s him.”

Lily nodded, then looked down at the pale werewolf, who was breathing deeply and evenly. “Tell me about the Blood-Silvering Curse,” she said. She didn’t like not knowing anything about a curse she’d been hit with.

“It does what it sounds like,” Sirius said. “It’s a curse that turns your blood into silver. It’s very illegal. The thing that makes it particularly nasty, though, is that it only affects werewolves. You could cast it into a crowd of people and nothing would happen, unless a werewolf was among them, in which case that werewolf would die.” Sirius’s face looked haggard for a moment. “Shortly after it was developed, a few gems of society got a bit overzealous. Ended up killing some rich and influential members of the Wizengamot who were _much too respectable_ to be werewolves.” His voice was rich with sarcasm. “The Ministry quickly declared that it was dangerously defective and banned its use outside of ‘documented and legally-authorized executions of lycanthropes.’ Eventually those fell out of favor, and the Curse fell into obscurity.”

Lily nodded slowly. “How do you know about it, then? And the counter-curse?”

Sirius shot her an amused look. “I’m a Black, and one of my best friends is a werewolf. Do you think I somehow failed to read every relevant book in our family library?”

Before Lily could answer, a muffled cracking sound outside presaged the arrival of one Severus Snape, Potions Master. He entered through the back, like Remus had done earlier, and paused when he came to the doorway, his dark eyes taking in the remnants of the living room. It really was a mess -- there were two holes in the ceiling clear through to the sky, with debris scattered all across the floor. Scorch marks from deflected curses marred the walls and furniture. Three prisoners, each some combination of stunned, bound, or jinxed, lay propped against the wall.  

“Black,” he drawled, “I see your standards of living have only improved.”

“Snape,” Sirius replied, sounding more tired than antagonistic. “Can you help or not?”

Snape’s dark eyes settled on the sleeping werewolf. He pulled out a stoppered vial of what looked like brown sludge and a silver goblet, and placed both on the floor. “You acquired the blood, I assume?” he asked.

Sirius pulled out the blood he’d drawn and placed that vial on the floor next to Snape’s. His other hand smoothed Remus’s hair off his forehead.

“Miss Potter,” Snape said without looking up at her, “instead of hovering uselessly, perhaps you would be good enough to stand guard? Your antics have doubtless drawn attention, but we cannot move Lupin for a quarter-hour yet.”

Lily was going to protest, since she wanted to watch what Snape was going to do to help Remus, but a look at Sirius’s drawn, worried face changed her mind. She could always ask questions later, and it was true that they were rather vulnerable as they were. “I’ll be outside,” she said, and she left the house through the front doorway, the actual front door still embedded in the far wall.

The street was just as dark and quiet as when she’d arrived. Lily wondered whether Remus even had any neighbors, since there were still no signs of life in any of the other small houses. Then again, Remus’s had seemed just as abandoned until Sirius had opened the door.

She felt a bit guilty about that -- if Sirius hadn’t needed to call her in, those vigilantes wouldn’t have found them, and Remus wouldn’t be laid up on the floor suffering from a curse used to murder werewolves. Lily could still hear Sirius inside discussing with Snape whatever they were doing in there; from the sound of things, Sirius’s quick thinking with the counter-curse had saved Remus from a quick and painful death, but now the poor man had to be administered several curative and restorative potions lest he suffer from a protracted and excruciating death instead. That Blood-Silvering Curse was truly nasty.

 _Sanarguentia_ , Lily remembered, and committed it to memory. She had no intention of murdering any werewolves, but it was better to know than to not.

“Lily,” Sirius called from inside.

Lily half-turned, so she could listen properly while still keeping an eye on the street. “Yes?”

“Remus is stable enough to move now,” Sirius told her. “We’re going to a safehouse, but-- I’m sorry, you can’t follow. The wards won’t let you in.”

There actually was a streetlamp at the intersection down the way, she noticed. It was off, but its design looked almost like a shadowy arrow pointing at the sky. Nothing up there but stars, though; the moon was more or less new. “I’ll make do,” she said.

Sirius looked at her for a long moment. “Take the floo to the Leaky Cauldron,” he said eventually. “I’ll find you there tomorrow. You and I are going to sit down for a long chat.”

“I’m sure we will,” Lily said.

Sirius frowned at her, and seemed to hesitate, but his loyalty to his friend outweighed any desire he felt to help a Lily who wasn’t the Lily he knew. He nodded, mostly to himself, and carefully lifted Remus from the floor.

Snape had already left the house, and Sirius followed him out back. Soon enough, a pair of Disapparitions echoed softly through the air. And Lily was once again alone.

Well, this had all certainly gone according to Dumbledore’s plan, hadn’t it?

Lily chuckled to herself, wondering what the old Headmaster would think of how things had unfolded. Not only had she failed to maintain his preferred story, Remus had been badly cursed, and now the “closest friends” she was supposed to be staying with had left her behind in a half-destroyed house. Not too bad for her first night in the past!

Well, second, she supposed. If she had her timelines straight, she’d spent her first night unconscious.

A groan from inside the house startled her -- cursing her carelessness, she remembered that she wasn’t _technically_ alone. She still had three werewolf hunters to deal with somehow. Sure, ignoring them and wandering off was an option, but it rankled; she was an Auror, and these guys had after all cast a very illegal Curse. By rights, they should be handed over to the Ministry.

But she certainly wasn’t going to try transporting them on her own. Better to call the current-day Aurors to come deal with it. And she could do _that_ by…

It took a minute or two, but she managed to find one of the discarded wands amid the rest of the splintered wood in the living room. She gave it a few more test waves; it was just as incompatible as before, but she thought she could force a single, weak spell through if she really wanted to. She missed her own wand -- hopefully soon she could drop by Diagon Alley and maybe see about buying one... with all the money she _totally_ had. And then she could swing down and rent a room at the Cauldron. Thanks so much, Sirius.

Shaking her head, she moved out to the center of the street, pointed the wand into the air, and said, “ _Tenebrimentio_.”

Absolutely nothing happened.

Mentally she pictured what was happening at the Ministry. Whatever hapless soul was manning the Auror Desk would have to notice the alarm, contact the Auror On-Call, and log it. The Auror On-Call might choose to wake some of his fellows for back-up, then confirm the location with the Auror at the Desk… Given standard response times, she should be seeing them pop in right… about…

With a loud _crack_ , a wizard and two witches appeared in the street, all wearing standard Auror robes -- the cut and design were a bit different than she was used to from the future, but the black-and-red color scheme and insignia had been the same for at least a century.

All three Aurors were facing Lily, which meant they had their backs to the ruins of Remus and Sirius’s place. The wizard in the middle was clearly the veteran of the trio; he was tall and black and his expression brooked no argument. He was flanked by -- Lily squinted, not sure if the shadows were playing tricks on her, or if there was really a pair of identical twins pointing wands at her right at that moment. They seemed to be around Lily’s own age, with black hair pulled back into short ponytails.

For all that they were identical in appearance, though, they reacted differently when they saw her. The one on the right gasped and started to lower her wand, but the one on the left just eyed her suspiciously.

“Hello,” Lily told them cheerfully. “Thanks for coming.”

“You’re Lily Potter!” the witch on the right blurted out.

“Jones,” the black wizard snapped out in admonishment. His eyes never left Lily. “I’ve heard the rumors,” he said, “but the rumors also say Lily Potter is hidden away inside Hogwarts. Who are you, and what are you doing in Petersfield?”

Is that where she was? Not that it helped. She’d never heard of Petersfield. “Like she said,” Lily answered him, pointing at the witch on the right. “I’m Lily Potter. As for why I’m here… you’d have to ask a certain Albus Dumbledore. He’s the one who thought it would be a good idea.”

She flipped the wand she was holding over in her hand and held it out, grip-first. After a moment, the wizard took it, and tapped it with his own wand. He frowned at the wisp of black smoke that emerged. “You cast _Tenebrimentio_?”

“I did,” Lily confirmed. “The wand’s not mine, though. If you go back further you’ll just get evidence against my friends in the house.”

“Friends?” the man repeated.

“Why I called you guys here,” Lily said, and she pointed past them. The witch on the right was the first to turn around, and her gasp prompted the others to do the same. “Inside,” Lily continued, “you’ll find three unsavory individuals, and plenty of cause to arrest, I believe.”

The Auror cast a detection charm, confirming the presence of three bodies in the house. “Jones, Tonks, go check it out,” he said. “I’ll stay with our new friend here.”

The two identical witches nodded, then set out for the house, wands raised cautiously. Assuming ‘Jones’ and ‘Tonks’ were surnames, maybe they weren’t twin sisters after all. Or maybe one of them was married?

Actually, now that she thought about it, the name Tonks sounded familiar. She didn’t think she knew anyone with the name, but maybe it had come up as part of someone’s history. Or maybe it had just been in relation to the war against Voldemort, since the woman was apparently an Auror.

“So, Lily Potter,” the remaining wizard said, folding his arms across his chest. “Who taught you _Tenebrimentio_? It’s not exactly common knowledge.” That was true -- the whole point of the spell was to set off Dark detectors, mocking the signature of some truly foul magic without actually doing anything. Despite its lack of negative effects, it was technically still illegal, because its only practical use was to create false alarms, potentially distracting the Ministry from actual Dark magic happening elsewhere.

Or, as Lily had just demonstrated, it also functioned as a handy Auror-summoning charm.

The strictly honest answer to the man’s question was that her father had taught her, in his capacity as a Guest Instructor during Auror training. He was too busy to be the primary instructor, but he did enjoy teaching, so he liked to put himself on the schedule whenever he could. “I read it in a book,” she said. “Do I get to know your name?”

He frowned at her, but obliged. “Shacklebolt,” he said. She nodded slowly; she’d never met the man himself, but she knew a Kingsley Shacklebolt had been a powerful and influential presence in the Ministry during her youth, and from what she could see on the shadowy street, the man standing before her was a match for the portraits she remembered.

There was a muffled crash from inside the house, followed by some colorful cursing, but it didn’t seem like the prisoners had done anything. One of the witches had just tripped.

“Are you really Lily Potter?” Shacklebolt asked her. He was still staring down at her like he half-expected her to dash off into the night at a moment’s notice. “Harry Potter’s dead mum?”

“I’m really Lily Potter,” Lily said, wondering if she’d have to say those words to everyone in Wizarding Britain. “I’m not anyone’s dead mum.” Belatedly, she realized that maybe she should still be trying to keep to the memory-loss story for the general public, even if it hadn’t worked with Sirius and Remus. Oh well -- hopefully Shacklebolt would only infer the “not dead” part.

The two identical witches came back out of the house, hovering three unconscious bodies between them. “It’s a mess in there, boss,” one of them said ruefully. Now that they’d been out of her sight, Lily had no idea which was Jones and which was Tonks.

“And did you find any reason not to arrest Lily Potter for assault?” Shacklebolt asked them.

Jones and Tonks glanced at each other. “The house belongs to a man named Remus Lupin,” one of them said. “Assuming Mrs. Potter was invited inside and these men were not, she was within rights to subdue them. None of them were hit by anything illegal.”

Shacklebolt nodded slowly. “And where is this Mr. Lupin now?”

“Honestly?” Lily said. “No idea. These guys hurt him badly, and Sirius Black took him away somewhere.”

Either Tonks or Jones let out an undignified squeak, and one of the floating miscreants tumbled down to the ground. Shacklebolt’s stare bore down on her, suddenly three or four times as intense. “Did you say _Sirius Black_?”

“Er… Yes?” Lily glanced around at the three Aurors, wondering what the big deal was.

“Do you mean to say,” Shacklebolt continued, his voice dangerously calm, “that Wizarding Britain’s most dangerous fugitive was here, and kidnapped a man in front of your eyes, and you only just thought to mention it now?”

“Wizarding Britain’s _what_?” Lily repeated. “Are we talking about the same person? Sirius Black, close friend to James and L-- uh, to me?”

“Sirius Black, You-Know-Who’s top lieutenant,” Shacklebolt informed her, “who escaped from Azkaban two years ago after over a decade of imprisonment, and who has been evading capture ever since. If you have information as to his whereabouts, as you _clearly_ do, I’m going to have to ask you to come in with us.”

Lily frowned, biting back her initial impulse to outright refuse. Truth be told, she was tired of sitting through interrogations -- tired of being questioned her every waking second. She was particularly not eager to make any statements on the record, the way an official Auror interview would have to be.

She also thought Shacklebolt’s accusation was ridiculous. She thought of the Sirius she’d met not that long ago, replaying their interactions in her mind -- the way he’d hugged her, thinking she was the old Lily Evans, back from the dead; the way he’d questioned her, trying to figure out her true identity; the way he’d cared for the cursed Remus, including calling in a man he clearly disliked to help save the werewolf’s life. And she thought back further in her memory, to her father’s stories of his childhood, to overhearing her eldest brother learn about his names, and yes, she remembered that Sirius Black had gone to and escaped from prison. She had never learned what he’d gone in for -- she’d never really cared. Ancient history, from her perspective. But she was fairly certain it would have come up if the man had been loyal to the most dangerous Dark Wizard in the last century.

Voldemort’s top lieutenant? Yes, that was nonsense. But Shacklebolt’s fervor was very clear. He would not be inclined to accept a refusal.

She looked past the Aurors, at the ruins of the now-vacated house. Even if she weaseled out of it, really, what were her options? She could spend the night in Remus’s house, but she would be awfully vulnerable. She didn’t think she could repair the front door without a wand, much less the holes in the ceiling. The thought of sleeping so exposed made her skin crawl. As for flooing to the Leaky Cauldron, again, that would be no help because she had no money.

So, she looked at Shacklebolt steadily. “I’ll go with you,” she said, “if you let me spend the night in one of your holding cells, and-- this is the hard part-- agree that I’m free to walk out again in the morning.”

He frowned at her. “I can’t just give a blanket promise like that.”

“Let me rephrase,” Lily said, rolling her eyes. “Agree that I’m free to go in the morning, assuming you don’t decide between now and then that you have some valid reason to arrest me. I just want a place to sleep.”

He looked back at her for a long moment, then shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said. “Jones, Tonks, take our guests into Processing. I’ll escort Potter.”

“Yes, boss,” one of them said, and they both lifted their wands. The three unconscious prisoners pressed together, and a shimmering ribbon encircled them. The two women both reached out to grasp the ribbon, and then spun in unison as they Apparated away, taking the three prisoners with them.

Shacklebolt held out an arm. “If you would,” he said.

Lily took it, and a moment later found herself passing through the suffocating sensation of side-along Apparition herself.

They reappeared in a large room full of straight-backed benches, all facing forward towards a set of sturdy double doors. They were open, right at that moment, and Jones and Tonks were levitating their charges between them as they hustled through. It was the only exit. There were no torches in the room, but the entire ceiling was enchanted to give off bright, even light, ensuring there were no shadowy corners anywhere.

Lily recognized where she was, of course. Like Shacklebolt had said -- Processing.

The tall Auror led her to a podium that stood in front of the doors, which had swung shut behind the others. A thick book lay on the podium, and a quill hovered eagerly over its pages. “Shacklebolt,” he told the quill, “escorting Lily Potter, for questioning relevant to Ministry Priority 307-A1.”

The quill scribbled down these details, and the double doors swung back open with barely a whisper. Lily followed Shacklebolt through, glancing around as she entered a section of the Ministry she remembered from thirty years in the future, curious to see what had changed -- what was going to change. It turned out, not much. There were a couple portraits she didn’t recognize, and she wondered what would end up happening to them, but for the most part the halls were the same, grey and austere. Certainly the layout was no different; she knew well before they arrived there that Shacklebolt was taking her to Interrogation Chamber B.

The chamber was a perfectly circular room, with a single chair facing away from the door. Lily thought back to her earlier interrogation by Dumbledore and Snape, and couldn’t help but sigh. At least this time she had all her wits about her.

“Take a seat, Mrs. Potter,” Shacklebolt said, gesturing to the chair.

“Just ‘miss’ is fine,” Lily said, and she sat down, facing the featureless, curved wall in front of her.

“Really?” Shacklebolt said dubiously. He stepped around until he was in front of her, and leaned back against the wall. To Lily, who was after all familiar with standard Auror interrogation techniques, this signalled that he did not see her as a threat. She was glad for that, since she had no intention of fighting anyone in the Ministry.

Instead of following up on the question of her titles, Shacklebolt dove right into the matter at hand. “Did you meet Sirius Black at Remus Lupin’s house?”

The Interrogation Chambers did not have any enchantments that compelled truth -- that kind of thing had been outlawed long ago. Truth potions could be administered with specific authorization and witnesses, but a general always-on truth charm made politicians nervous. She was free to lie as brazenly as she wanted. But… she had already admitted this much. It would be foolish to try to walk it back.

“Yes,” she said, “he was there. I wasn’t expecting him, though, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Shacklebolt nodded slowly. “He was meeting with Lupin when you arrived?”

“No,” Lily answered. “He was alone in the house when I got there.” Then she realized she had an opportunity to spin the encounter use Shacklebolt’s assumptions against him. It would throw Sirius under the bus a little bit, but she could be completely honest while still avoiding getting too much into her own circumstances, and that had to be her priority. Plus, it seemed like the Auror was suspicious of Remus, and this might help take the heat off him a little bit too. “Remus entered with his wand up and ready,” she told Shacklebolt carefully. “He seemed pretty suspicious. He cast _Lux Veracis_ and asked lots of questions.”

“What kind of questions?” Shacklebolt asked.

Lily shrugged, trying to seem casual. “Some things to verify identity. I can’t speak for Remus, but personally I don’t think Sirius was an imposter or anything. I think it was really him.”

Shacklebolt grunted, and Lily had to fight to sit still without fidgeting. “Let’s back up a bit,” he said, “and talk about why you were there in the first place.”

Lily nodded. This, at least, she could be honest about. “Blame Dumbledore,” she said. “Given my… somewhat unique situation, he thought it would be good for me to stay with friends.”

“Friends,” Shacklebolt repeated cooly.

“Er,” Lily said, “yes.” She tried to think back to Dumbledore’s exact words -- it hadn’t been _that_ long ago. “He made me a Portkey and said, ‘I am sending you to two of--’” She quickly edited the line, hoping Shacklebolt wouldn’t notice her slight hesitation. “‘-- _your_ closest friends.’”

“Isn’t that interesting,” Shacklebolt said, and he pushed off from against the wall. “I think that’s all I need from you tonight, Mrs. Potter.”

“Really?” Lily asked, surprised. The interview had only just begun, after all. He hadn’t even started digging into what she knew about Sirius’s current location, which had been the whole point of bringing her in. Not that she could have helped him at all, even if she’d wanted to. “And, really, ‘miss’ is fine.”

He moved past her to open the door, leading her back into the hallway. “We’ll talk again soon, I’m sure,” he said, before rounding a corner. Lily followed, knowing exactly where they were going -- she had asked for it, after all. “In the meantime, I think I’ll be having a chat with Dumbledore.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Lily said, mostly just for something to say. They had pretty much reached their destination -- the Ministry holding cells. They were all empty at the moment, which made her wonder about those three vigilantes. She hoped they would stay away throughout the night; she’d never dealt well with noisy neighbors.

“And, just as you requested,” Shacklebolt said dryly as he came to a stop, “you can spend the night here.”

“I appreciate it,” Lily told him as she walked into one of her own volition.

He shook his head bemusedly, then took out his wand to seal the door. The door was mostly thick iron bars, rather than anything solid, so they could still talk. “We’ll see in the morning about letting you back out.”

“Just have that chat with Dumbledore,” she told him. “He really knows more than me about pretty much everything, so…”

The dark-skinned Auror gave her a somewhat blank look, then turned on his heel and marched away, hopefully to find his way to Hogwarts.

Lily wasn’t worried in the slightest about being locked into the holding cell. In her own time, Kingsley Shacklebolt had been regarded with great respect, with a reputation for honesty, forthrightness, and strength of will. It was true that the Shacklebolt she was dealing with now was about two decades in politics removed from that reputation, but she felt comfortable assuming that a good man was a good man. He would honor their agreement, tenuous as it was.

And anyway, even if he fell short of her expectations, she knew she could break out of the holding cell if she had to. She’d done it before, as part of a bit of misadventure during Auror training. Though, she supposed, it would be somewhat harder without a wand.

The holding cells in general were not overly large, each one about ten square meters in area. They were very bland, with beige walls and a dark floor of stone. They had a bed, low to the floor with a very thin mattress, and a desk and chair, both of simple but sturdy wooden construction. That was it in the way of furniture. The cells wouldn’t change much in the next thirty years. The only real difference Lily could spot in hers was the color of the blanket on the bed -- black, where she remembered gray.

It was no luxury suite, for sure, but it would do for one night, especially since she had no expectation of falling asleep. It was the middle of the night now for everyone else, but she had only actually been awake for a few hours. She hadn’t wanted to stay in the holding cell so she could take a nap; she just wanted somewhere to stay. Somewhere she could just _be_.

And now, for the first time since she’d fallen through the floor of the Department of Mysteries, she had the chance to stop and… relax for a while.

She lay back on the bed, her eyes staring up at the featureless ceiling. More than anything else, she decided, she needed to figure out what she was going to do. She needed a plan -- not necessarily a grand one, just _something_ to give her direction until she found her way back home, one way or another.

That would stay her primary goal -- getting home -- but since she and Dumbledore were both clueless as to how, she figured she would need something to keep her busy in the meantime. Of course, she could just imagine the voice of her Aunt Hermione, almost offended that she wouldn’t stay well enough occupied by researching her predicament. Frankly, though, she had very little stomach for aimless, protracted study. The thought of spending years bending over books in dusty libraries just for the slightest chance of finding something useful -- no, that wasn’t her. She needed to _do_ something. She would leave the reading to Dumbledore. Presumably he enjoyed it.

If she wasn’t going to stay holed up in a library somewhere, then her options all quickly ran into the same problem: Resources. Namely, she had none. She had no money. She had no wand. She didn’t even have any clothes to wear tomorrow, now that she was away from Hogwarts and its elves. Hygiene wouldn’t be a real problem for a while -- magic couldn’t replace a nice bath, but it could certainly keep her from getting smelly -- but it was the principle of the thing, really.

So, the question was, how could she start getting her hands on some _stuff_?

There were three main avenues she could think of. First, she could just go out and steal it. That didn’t seem like a wise choice, though, considering her situation, and the other Lily Potter’s reputation. If she started tarnishing her grandmother’s name with petty theft… Well, there were better ways.

Like, for example, making that reputation work for her. She could ask people for help. Considering her ostensible role as the mother of the Boy-Who-Lived, surely people would be willing to offer their assistance once they realized she had nothing. That might be its own kind of scandal, come to think of it. Lily Potter, living off of charity?

But, luckily, there was a third option. She was a Potter, after all, and Potters had money. All she had to do… was go get it.

Which meant either convincing the goblins of Gringotts that she was really Lily Potter and deserved access to the vaults, or explaining to Harry why she needed his help to withdraw her own money.

How did the goblins verify identity in cases like this, anyway? The standard methods of keys and wands didn’t really apply, but they surely had some way to check she was who she said she was. As strange as her own situation seemed, after all, she doubted it was the first time in history someone had returned from being dead -- or assumed dead, more likely -- to claim their rightful property. It was just a matter of whether this goblin authentication process relied on blood magic, which she thought she could pass due to being a true Potter, or some sort of intrinsic magical fingerprint that would be much harder to fool.

Well, regardless, it was her only real option without feeling guilty or giving the _Daily Prophet_ a field day, so she would pursue it in the morning. If all went well, she could be on a shopping spree in Diagon Alley by lunchtime.

Of course, the thought of accumulating worldly possessions reminded her that she had no real place to put them, but that was a long-term problem to solve. The Leaky Cauldron would suffice until she found a real place to stay.

The sound of soft footsteps interrupted her planning, and she quickly sat up on the bed. The Ministry holding cells were not overly comfortable, but they were also very definitely not a jail. There had not, to her knowledge, ever been a standard practice of regular patrols to keep watch. There shouldn’t be anyone coming by at this time of night… unless…

As she watched, three bodies floated into view, bobbing along down the hallway. They were followed by a young witch in Auror robes, clearly the one levitating them. She had pink shoulder-length hair, kind of feathery and punk, which Lily would not have expected on an Auror. Or maybe she was just even more clueless about mid-Nineties Wizarding fashion than she thought.

The three bodies were, of course, the three werewolf-hunting vigilantes who had broken into Remus’s house. But the pink-haired witch was not one of the Aurors who had accompanied Shacklebolt to the scene. Lily stood, already weary of having to go through the is-it-really-Lily-Potter song and dance again.

But to her surprise, the Auror just waved at her as she passed, and said cheerfully, “Wotcher, Mrs. Potter!”

“Just ‘miss’ is fine,” Lily said absently as she studied the witch, trying to match her with any of the relatively few people she’d seen since falling back in time. The witch, for her part, seemed to notice her confusion, because she paused and grinned ruefully.

“Sorry,” she said, and scrunched up her face, and her hair darkened to black, and her cheekbones shifted, and she continued, “I looked like Jones earlier. I’m Tonks.”

“Tonks,” Lily said, “you’re a Metamorphma--” And then she cut off with a gasp, because the realization of just who she was talking to struck her like a lightning bolt.

She’d thought of Teddy Lupin once already that day, when she’d met Remus. She had never been terribly close with her father’s godson -- the family treated him like yet another cousin, but he was the oldest of them all, and the ten-year gap between Teddy and Lily had prevented them from ever truly bonding. Teddy had spent time with her brothers, especially James, but the last thing they’d wanted was a little girl tottering around with them.

Just the same, Teddy _was_ family, and it sickened her that she had not immediately recognized the name of his mother, the moment she’d heard it. Tonks -- Nymphadora Tonks, she now remembered clearly -- was considered a hero of the Dark Wars, one name among many on the Memorial of the Fallen; near the end of the Wars she had married Remus Lupin and borne him a son, and less than a month later both of them were dead. Tonks, as in Andromeda Tonks, the woman who had actually raised Teddy -- Lily had only vague memories of the much older witch, and she thought of her as Aunt Andromeda when she thought of her at all, but that was no excuse.

She wasn’t sure what expression her face held as she wrestled with this information, but it must have been an unpleasant one, because Tonks’s cheerful air faded away, and she said, “Is something wrong?”

“Sorry,” Lily said, and began to rub her forehead. “Just-- memories…”

There was a quiet moment as they continued to stare at each other. Tonks took the opportunity to switch back to her previous appearance, with the pink hair and, presumably, more natural face. Lily wasn’t fazed in the slightest by this demonstration of extremely rare magical talent, now that she knew who she was talking to -- Teddy had inherited his mother’s ability and, as a consequence, she had been somewhat inured to its novelty. But it struck her, as she looked at what she assumed was Tonks’s unmorphed face, that the vaguely punk Auror was so… young.

Then the moment passed, and Tonks glanced down at the three bodies still bobbing in mid-air in the middle of the hallway. “A moment,” she said, and she gestured with her wand, placing the three men into the holding cell next door. As they passed, Lily was somewhat disappointed to see that they had been cured of all of their various jinxes and errant spell effects. Maybe that was what had taken them so long in processing.

When her task was done, Tonks returned to stand in front of Lily’s cell. “I remember meeting you once,” she announced, a small smile on her face. “When you graduated from Hogwarts. Sirius threw a big party--” a flicker of something passed over Tonks’s face, but given what people apparently believed about Sirius, Lily was surprised she’d mentioned him at all-- “and I got to meet all his friends. Including you and James.” She glanced away for a second, rubbing the back of her neck. “I was pretty young, so I don’t remember it _well_ , mind you. But the day left an impression.”

And then Tonks was looking at her expectantly, as if waiting for Lily to say, “Yes, of course, I remember that too, you were very cute as a little girl.” Except, of course, Lily remembered nothing of the sort, because Lily was the wrong Lily.

Very carefully, she laid out her story in her mind. She was confused enough already, with two or three versions of “the truth” floating around, and she hadn’t even been here two days. Best to stick with the official, Dumbledore-endorsed version, and then later she could “reveal” more if it was warranted.

So, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t really remember anything.” She held up a hand to forestall any questions. “And I do mean… anything. No real details about anything before… you know.” She shrugged helplessly, which didn’t take much acting. “I talked to Dumbledore, so I know the outline of what happened, but I may as well be a third party, because I don’t remember any of it myself.” Maybe that was a little too on the nose?

“Oh,” Tonks said. “But just now, you said, a memory…?”

“Just-- just the knowledge of what a Metamorphmagus is,” Lily said, “and that I had met one before. But no details. I really don’t remember the party, I’m sorry.”

“No,” Tonks said, but she seemed brighter. “You must, though, deep down. I’m the only one you could possibly have met before.” Then she waved a hand to dismiss that topic. “If you’ve talked to Dumbledore, what were you doing way out in Petersfield? Shouldn’t you be at Hogwarts?”

“I was,” Lily explained, deciding that there wasn’t really any need to dissemble about this. “But I had to get out of the castle. Because Harry is there, and…”

Tonks’s eyes widened as she realized. “You don’t remember him,” she whispered. “Oh, Merlin, that’s awful.”

Lily nodded slowly. “I don’t think I could handle actually talking to him right now. Maybe later, when the shock has worn off-- maybe after I remember a bit more--”

“I can’t believe it,” Tonks said. “Lily Potter, back from the dead, and she doesn’t even remember her own son.” Then she seemed to realize how tactless she was being, because her cheeks went a bit pink.

“Let’s talk about you,” Lily said abruptly to change the subject, and also because she was genuinely curious. “You’re an Auror, obviously. How old are you, exactly?”

“Twenty-two,” Tonks said, giving her a look. “I’m fully qualified, don’t you worry.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Lily said. She herself was fully qualified at twenty-one, after all, and she was far from the youngest she knew of. In the era after the Dark Wars, a lot of Aurors started young, straight out of Hogwarts.

Rather, she’d asked because she happened to know that the young woman in front of her would end up marrying Remus, and while she was sure she’d seen the dates on paper somewhere before, it had never really sunk in how large that age gap was. Remus had to be nearly forty, surely?

Come to think of it, had they even met yet? It was somewhat ironic, Lily decided, that Tonks had responded to a call at her future husband’s house and had no idea.

Then she sobered, remembering that at that very moment Remus was suffering from the after-effects of a deadly curse, under the care of a man who at least intensely disliked him, hidden away in some secret safehouse. Romance would be the last thing on his mind, and Lily felt a bit guilty for considering it on his behalf.

“Was there anything else?” Tonks said, and Lily realized that she’d been lost in her thoughts for too long.

“There’s the matter of Sirius,” she said, and watched as once again Tonks fought back a grimace. “Shacklebolt said something about him being Voldemort’s lieutenant, but I just don’t understand how that could be true.” Interestingly, Tonks flinched a second time at Voldemort’s name. Lily had heard stories about how all of Wizarding Britain had been terrified of the Dark Lord’s name, but she’d never really seen it in action before -- all of the history books and museums and memorials in her time made a very deliberate point of using “Voldemort,” as if to prove that they _could_.

“It was a shock to everyone,” Tonks said uncomfortably, “but… Sirius betrayed you and James to You-Know-Who. He sold you out and… got you killed…” She trailed off, probably because of how weird it was to say that to someone.

“He didn’t, though,” Lily said. “That’s not what happened.” She wasn’t exactly one hundred percent on what had, but she knew that much at least. “Trust me, Tonks, Sirius has _never_ worked for Voldemort.”

“But--” Tonks stepped closer to the door of Lily’s cell, lowering her voice, even though the only people around were those three vigilantes, and they were well out of it for sure. “I want to believe the best of him too,” she said, “but he betrayed you! And murdered a street full of muggles!”

“Oh,” Lily said, then, “ _Oh_ ,” because that detail was enough to jog her memory a bit. She remembered the story much better now. “Listen, Tonks,” she said, “it’s true I don’t remember details at all, but I still have-- impressions, you know? Like how I remembered I had met a Metamorphmagus before.” She was really glad she had that example to point to, or she would have had a much tougher time convincing the pink-haired Auror, she was sure.

Tonks nodded cautiously. “I remember,” she said.

“It’s true I met Sirius in that house,” Lily said, “and if he had betrayed me, don’t you think I would-- you know-- _feel_ it somehow?” Tonks seemed unswayed, so Lily also stepped closer to the door and began to speak more forcefully. “I can’t give you all the answers, and I don’t know how it all went down, but I _promise_ you, there is no doubt in my mind that Sirius Black is innocent. Because I don’t remember much, but I can tell you one thing: _Sirius Black was not our Secret-Keeper._ Someone _else_ was. Someone _else_ betrayed us.”

“Who?” Tonks demanded, her voice hoarse.

Lily waited a few seconds for dramatic effect. Then, she resounded, “Peter Pettigrew!”

Tonks opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her eyes studied Lily’s face carefully, looking perhaps for any hint of duplicity. Then she said, “I need to talk to Shacklebolt,” and hurried away.

Slowly, in the quiet, Lily sat back down on the bed.

Identifying Peter Pettigrew as the traitor… it might be hard to maintain the amnesia excuse after “remembering” that. And she wasn’t sure how it would possibly fit with the story Sirius and Remus believed, that she was from some alternate world where everyone’s relationships were all different. Oh, well. She knew she had made the right decision. Even without paying much attention to the stories of Sirius Black, she knew her father had loved him, and she knew the current state of affairs simply couldn’t be allowed to stand.

She would not allow Sirius to remain a fugitive for a crime he didn’t commit, especially when she could clear his name so easily. Who better to proclaim his innocence, after all, than one of the people he had allegedly betrayed?

As for Pettigrew himself -- if she remembered the stories correctly, he had spent some years living as Uncle Ron’s pet rat. She wasn’t sure if that was still the case in this particular year; if so, it would be easy to grab him. If not… well, they would figure something out.

She lay down again, wondering if Tonks or Shacklebolt would be back any time soon. She hoped not; she was actually looking forward to several hours of uninterrupted peace and quiet, now.

She had a lot of thinking to do.


	4. This All Could Have Been Avoided

Lily’s eyes snapped open at the sound of people approaching. Had she actually dozed off? She was sprawled rather inelegantly across the holding cell’s small bed, so, probably. With only a second or two to make herself presentable, she didn’t bother trying to hop up to her feet. She just arranged herself like she was lounging casually and hoped it wasn’t too blatant an effort.

Three people arrived and crowded the door, looking in on her. Lily spotted Dumbledore, Shacklebolt, and a witch she didn’t recognize. This unknown witch was stern-looking, with a square jaw and short gray hair, and she wore a monocle over her left eye. She peered down at Lily with calm curiosity.

“Potter,” Shacklebolt called out.

Now Lily stood from the bed. She brushed herself off and smoothed out her robes, taking her time. Her three visitors waited patiently. “Yes, Shacklebolt?” she responded.

“Madam Bones would like a word with you,” he said, gesturing to the unknown witch.

“Madam Bones?” Lily repeated, and began to sift through her memory to see if she could work out who exactly this was.

The one-two punch of identifying Tonks and realizing she could do some good for Sirius had forced her to acknowledge that she couldn’t afford to keep coasting on her vague memories of History of Magic. It was unacceptable that she had met a woman who was practically family and not realized it. It was unacceptable that she had needed reminders before she could piece together the details of her father’s godfather’s story. She was in the past, and it was time she started acting like it -- meaning, it was time to start taking advantage of her future knowledge more proactively.

In her life, she had gone out of her way at times to ignore and disregard her father’s stories. But they were there, in her head. She had heard them. And so she had spent the night, until she had apparently dozed off, thinking back on her own childhood, trying to summon from the depths of her mind her father’s voice as he told his children bedside stories of the Dark Wars. She thought back to books in the library, and their dry presentation of charts and timelines laying out the events of the wars. She tried to recall everything she had ever known about Harry Potter’s years at school, determined not be caught blindsided again.

And so, when Auror Shacklebolt introduced Madam Bones, she knew she had heard the name before. Madam Bones was someone important -- she had a role to play. But, maybe because she had just been woken up, Lily couldn’t quite corral her fragments of memory into any useful knowledge of the future. Hopefully, something would remind her soon.

“Last night you made some rather astounding allegations to Auror Tonks,” Madam Bones said, her voice booming in the small hallway. Lily spared a thought to wonder if the three vigilantes in the other cell were awake and listening. “If you would come with us, I would like you to repeat those allegations, on the record.”

“Of course,” Lily said. “I would be happy to answer your questions as best I can, under the circumstances.” She glanced at Dumbledore, wondering how he felt about finding her in a Ministry holding cell. But if he had any opinion at all about his plans going awry, he did not show it on his face. “Has Dumbledore explained to you about my… memory problem?”

“He has,” Madam Bones said gruffly, as if she did not quite believe him.

Soon enough, Shacklebolt was releasing the seal on the cell door. “Come with us,” he said, and then the four of them were on their way, with Dumbledore and Bones leading and Shacklebolt trailing slightly behind.

Their journey ended in an office she had been in before, but not too frequently. The first time, she remembered, had been when she’d come in to interview for her spot in Auror training. Traditionally, incoming wannabe Aurors were screened first by their N.E.W.T. scores, second by an interview with the Head Auror, and third by a series of practical tests. When it came time for Lily to interview, though, her father had to recuse himself for obvious reasons, and her interview was kicked up the ladder to the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, at the time a man named Gawain Robards.

Robards’s office had been furnished with comforts, like a nice rug and padded chairs for visitors, but without any real soul. Nothing in the office had been personal in nature -- no photos or portraits or trophies or much at all in the way of decoration. The office as Lily walked into it now was almost the complete opposite. The chairs were severe and workmanly, and there was certainly no fuzzy rug on the floor; even the lighting seemed sharper and brighter. But there was also a large portrait on the wall featuring a very old couple who smiled benevolently down on the room, and a photo of a smiling teenaged girl sitting on the desk, and bookshelves in enough disarray that they were obviously for function, not for show.

Madam Bones took her seat behind the desk, and took the time to straighten a few papers before folding her hands and waiting for the others to be seated. When Lily sat, she found herself facing Bones directly, with Dumbledore at an angle off to the side. Shacklebolt remained standing, next to the door.

“Mrs. Potter,” Bones said, “I am Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. You are here for an informal interview regarding information you may be able to share about the fugitive Sirius Black.”

“Just ‘miss’ is fine,” Lily said, feeling like she should get a nametag or something with those four words on it. But then Dumbledore gave her a look, and Lily realized that if there was ever a time not to push the boundaries of his intended cover story, it was while talking to a senior Ministry official with him sitting right there in the room. “I mean, you can call me what you like,” she said quickly. “It’s just, I have no memory of being married, so ‘Mrs.’ sounds strange to me.”

Madam Bones’s dark eyes studied her carefully, the Department Head’s face an unreadable mask. “My apologies, Miss Evans,” she said, and Lily had to fight not to grimace. She had made her bed. Being called the wrong name wouldn’t kill her.

Then Bones smiled. It wasn’t a particularly friendly smile. Opening a desk drawer, she pulled out a milky white sphere about the size of her fist, then placed it on the desk. Then she drew her wand, tapped the sphere, and said, “Miss Evans, please repeat for us now the information you shared with Auror Tonks last night.”

“Well,” Lily said slowly, “Auror Shacklebolt had previously made clear to me that Sirius Black was a fugitive, but the explanation for _why_ didn’t… ring true to me. So I asked Auror Tonks last night for a little more detail.” She shifted in her chair. She had known this interview was coming -- or one very much like it -- and she had considered how best to present her story. “She explained to me that Sirius had betrayed my-- my family to Voldemort, and additionally had murdered a ‘street full’ of Muggles.” She took a deep breath. “When she told me that, I got a… a flash of memory, like a sudden insight. And I knew that we were hiding from Voldemort using a Fidelius charm, and I knew that Peter Pettigrew was our Secret-Keeper. Sirius couldn’t have betrayed us even if he had wanted to.” She fell silent, then looked down at the floor. “I… don’t have anything to say about the street full of Muggles, though.” She remembered full well that it had been Pettigrew who had killed them too, but there wasn’t any good way to pretend to ‘remember’ that, seeing as it had happened after the real Lily Potter had died.

Madam Bones steepled her fingers, considering this tale for a moment. “The Fidelius Charm is a very difficult bit of magic,” she said. “Do you recall who cast it for you?”

Hesitating, Lily glanced at Dumbledore for guidance, but received only a tiny shake of the head. Did that mean she shouldn't claim to know? Did that mean _he_ didn’t know? “I do not,” she said.

“Dumbledore,” Madam Bones said, turning slightly to address the old professor. “In the past, you have testified as to the nature of the protections erected to defend the Potters from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Please state for the record how you acquired that information.”

“As a personal friend of the Potters,” Dumbledore said smoothly, “I was privy to their discussions and plans prior to their going into hiding, and I thoroughly tested their defenses after they had done so.”

“Based on your conclusions about the Potters’ defenses,” Bones said, “were they protected by a valid, properly-cast Fidelius Charm?” She had an almost bored tone now, like she was covering information she already knew the answers to. Since apparently Dumbledore had testified about this before, Lily supposed she did.

“Yes,” Dumbledore answered. “Their defenses included a valid, properly-cast Fidelius Charm to hide their location.”

“And who was the Secret-Keeper for the Potters under this Fidelius Charm?”

“For some time, I believed that it was Sirius Black,” Dumbledore said.

There was a pause, as the other three occupants in the room all stared at him. Then Bones said, “You testified to the Wizengamot in November of 1981 that you were _quite certain_ Sirius Black was the Secret-Keeper.”

“Indeed,” Dumbledore said with a small twinkle in his eyes, “and indeed I was. All of my discussions with the Potters and with Black led me to that conclusion. I can only assume now that I was being intentionally misled.”

“Dumbledore,” Bones said seriously, “are you truly willing to recant your previous testimony solely on the word of a single amnesiac witch?”

“Not solely, I assure you,” Dumbledore said. “But as it happens, when it comes to the matter of who exactly was Secret-Keeper for the Potters, I can think of no greater authority to turn to than the very witch who cast the charm.”

There was another pause, and this time all heads turned to look at Lily.

“Me?” she said. She had no idea if that was true -- though she kind of felt like, if Lily Potter had cast her own Fidelius Charm, maybe it would have come up at some point?

“I believe this also explains why Lily was able to remember the identity of her Secret-Keeper, even though she can remember nothing else,” Dumbledore said. He leaned forward, and his voice deepened, shifting into what Lily now thought of as his ‘lecture mode.’ “The Fidelius Charm is soul magic, after all. Just as the secret itself is embedded in the soul of the Secret-Keeper, so too is the identity of that Secret-Keeper embedded in the soul of the caster.”

Lily relaxed slightly. He was just spinning tales to cover up her inconsistency, then. He was frighteningly good at that.

Bones cleared her throat. “Very well. Then we will proceed, under the assumption that Peter Pettigrew was the true Secret-Keeper for the Potters. It does follow, then, that Sirius Black could not have betrayed their location to You-Know-Who without his assistance.” She began to shuffle some of the papers around on her desk, perhaps to give herself time to think through the implications of this.

Dumbledore leaned back again, apparently satisfied that things were going in a direction he approved of.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Dumbledore,” Bones said slowly, “but part of the nature of the Fidelius Charm is that the Secret-Keeper _cannot_ be coerced into sharing the secret. It must be voluntary and intentional.”

“More or less,” Dumbledore said, folding his hands in his lap. “The Secret-Keeper must make the choice of his own free will. As long as he does not _want_ to tell the secret, the secret cannot be told. But he can be persuaded, or coerced, into making that choice. Nothing could truly prevent that.”

“Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew were friends for nearly a decade,” Bones commented. “I’m sure Black could have found a way to manipulate the secret out of Pettigrew.”

“What?” Lily said, unable to stop herself from interrupting. “No, that’s not right at all. Peter Pettigrew himself was the traitor. He told Voldemort the secret willingly. Sirius had nothing to do with that.”

Bones gave Lily a bit of a gimlet eye. “I understand your reluctance to think poorly of Black,” she said. “He was your husband’s closest friend. The fact of the matter remains, Black murdered Pettigrew along with a dozen Muggles. I hardly think--” Then she fell silent, frowning.

Lily hoped the Department Head was busy realizing that the mass-murder story didn’t make sense either given what they’d already established. Better that than, say, thinking about the exact boundaries of what Lily was and wasn’t supposed to be able to remember.

Before Madam Bones could speak up again, however, there was a noise at the door. By the time Lily had turned to look, the door had swung open, revealing three new visitors: a portly man in pinstripe robes and a bowler hat, a somewhat squat woman in pink, and a tall man with short, graying brown hair wearing Auror robes.

“Dumbledore!” the man in front cried. “What is the meaning of this?”

Dumbledore stood, and so did Madam Bones, so Lily took her cue from them and pushed up to her feet as well.

“Ah, Minister,” Dumbledore said unflappably. “How good of you to join us.”

“Join you!” the man exclaimed. He really seemed very excitable, Lily thought. “I should have been here from the start! What do you think you’re doing, meeting here behind my back?”

“Minister,” Bones said politely, “I am conducting an informal interview to discover new information in the case of Sirius Black. I sent you a memo as a courtesy. If I led you to believe your presence was required, then I apologize.”

“I know what you are doing!” The man said. Then he turned and faced Lily, as if to begin ranting at her too, but he stopped short when he realized who he was looking at. “Good heavens,” he said weakly. “Lily Potter. It really is true…”

Dumbledore cleared his throat. “Lily, this is Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic.”

Lily certainly knew _that_ name. It took her back to a memory of long ago, when she and her siblings had run about playing Ministry. The young Lily had spent her time dashing back and forth, zapping imaginary bad guys with a wholly non-magical stick. But James had announced, “I’m the Minister for Magic!” because he was the oldest. And then he had turned to his younger brother and said, “You can be ex-Minister Fudge! Disgraced and ruined by your own incompetence!”

It wasn’t until several years later that Lily really understood why Al had started crying.

“Nice to meet you,” she said awkwardly to the man himself.

“The _Prophet_ has it right, then?” Fudge said, giving her a squirrely look. “You don’t remember anything from… before?”

She’d only hashed out that story with Dumbledore the night before -- the _Daily Prophet_ seemed remarkably well informed. Maybe he’d leaked it to them, to help spread the story as fast as possible. She supposed it was to their advantage, as long as the paper stuck to the explanations Dumbledore fed them.  

“A couple things, here and there,” she answered Fudge, so she wouldn’t shoot her own Sirius testimony in the foot. “But for the most part, no, I don’t remember anything.”

“Be that as it may, Minister,” Bones said with faint impatience, “did you have a reason for barging in, or can we get back to the interview?”

Fudge looked back and forth between Bones and Lily. “Finish up quickly,” he said, “and then I will need to see Mrs. Potter myself.” And then he found a seat, prompting everyone else to sit back down too. Or most everyone -- the woman in pink remained standing, hovering a pace behind and to the right of the Minister, and the new Auror took up a position opposite Shacklebolt by the door.

Bones sighed audibly, but apparently she didn’t have the authority to kick the Minister for Magic out of the room -- or at least, she wasn’t willing to exercise it. She proceeded to ignore his presence instead, and turned back to Lily and Dumbledore. “We have established,” she said, “that when the Potters went into hiding in 1981, they concealed their location by means of the Fidelius Charm, as cast by Lily Potter, and with Peter Pettigrew as the Secret-Keeper.”

Lily saw the Minister make a sudden movement, but he did not interrupt.

“We move now,” Madam Bones continued, “to the matter of the mass murder of twelve Muggles plus the aforementioned Peter Pettigrew, by Sirius Black. I think we can surmise that Black was motivated not out of loyalty to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, as previously assumed, but out of a sense of vengeance for the loss of his friends?” The stately witch tilted her head, as if considering the sound of those words in the air. “If so, the narrative of Black being You-Know-Who’s top lieutenant suddenly seems to hold very little merit at all.”

“But this is nonsense!” Fudge cried, apparently unable to help himself any longer. “Dumbledore! You’ve been filling Mrs. Potter’s head with tall tales! I thought we left this matter behind us a year ago!”

Bones paused, her eyes snapping over to him, half out of his seat in indignation. “What exactly do you mean by that, Minister?”

“This balderdash about Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew!” Fudge said. “The Potter boy was Confunded into believing a story very much like it last year, when Black was captured at Hogwarts.” He sat back down in his chair, looking almost hurt as he stared at Dumbledore. “Why did you relay that story to Lily Potter? The poor woman has no memory, and can’t tell truth from lies!”

Lily saw Madam Bones glance back her way, and she quickly shook her head. “Dumbledore and I have never discussed Sirius,” she said.

“Minister,” Bones said, “perhaps you’d like to state for the record exactly what story you were told last year? Since you seem to believe it’s relevant...”

Fudge opened his mouth, then hesitated.

“ _Hem hem_ ,” the woman in pink interrupted. She still had not been introduced. “The Minister is not the one being interrogated here. I believe it would be best to stick to the matter at hand. Don’t you agree, Madam?” Her voice was surprisingly high-pitched and breathy, like a vapid little girl’s.

“Nobody is being interrogated,” Bones reminded her. “This is just an interview. If the Minister would like to present additional information to the record, by all means. Otherwise, I would appreciate a _minimum_ of interruptions.”

The woman in pink smiled, but it was blatantly fake, even to a complete stranger like Lily. “Of course,” she said.

Madam Bones turned back to Fudge. “So, Minister. You were told a ‘story’ -- an alternate explanation of the events that took place on October 31 and November 1 of 1981. Would you care to relay this story to the rest of us?”

Fudge eyed the milky white sphere on Bones’s desk. “No, I would not.”

“The Minister is referring to the events of just over a year ago,” Dumbledore cut in smoothly, “when Sirius Black was apprehended and briefly contained within Hogwarts.” He turned to Lily and said, “Your son and his friends were involved in his capture. I would be happy to explain in greater detail on some future occasion.”

“That would be nice,” Lily said. Even despite her recent efforts to remember her father’s stories, she wasn’t really sure what events Dumbledore was referring to. She could remember, vaguely, that he had mentioned meeting Sirius for the first time at the end of his third year, so that fit time-wise, but he’d never said anything about helping to capture his godfather. Frankly, it sounded out of character.

On the other hand, Dumbledore’s use of the phrase ‘your son’ was a reminder that the Headmaster was casually lying through his teeth about all sorts of things, so she could wait to reserve judgment until she heard the real story, away from Ministry ears.

“After Sirius Black’s capture,” Dumbledore continued, turning back to Madam Bones, “young Mr. Potter and his friends insisted quite strenuously that Black was not guilty of the crimes for which he had been sent to Azkaban. Central to their version of events was the fact that Peter Pettigrew was an unregistered Animagus, taking the form of a rat.”

“Dumbledore,” Fudge nearly moaned, “not on the record…”

“I had the chance to speak with Black directly, during his brief incarceration within the castle,” Dumbledore soldiered on. “Black’s perspective of events agreed with Mr. Potter’s, including his assertion that Pettigrew was an unregistered Animagus.” He shifted to look at Fudge. His eyes were not twinkling now. “I hoped to question him further, of course, but the Minister was intent on administering the Dementor’s Kiss as soon as possible. Regardless, before either of us could take our preferred course of action, Black rendered the debate irrelevant by escaping from Hogwarts entirely.”

“Dumbledore,” Bones said, “when you spoke with Black, did you address his murder of the twelve Muggles?”

“Also the work of Pettigrew,” Dumbledore said, “or so Black alleges. He claims that Pettigrew killed the Muggles as a distraction, then transformed into his Animagus form of a rat and slipped away. Black was left to take the fall.”

“Minister?” Bones said a little sharply. “Does that match the story you heard from Mr. Potter?”

“Of course it does,” Fudge said miserably. “Black Confunded them, of course he wasn’t going to contradict his own made-up story.”

“Regardless of your personal suspicions,” Bones said, “you _really_ should have brought this information to me immediately. There are ways to determine if someone has been influenced by the Confundus Charm, but not a year after the fact.” She sighed. “In any event. To summarize the findings of this interview: In the case of Sirius Black, charged formally with the murder of twelve Muggles and one Wizard, new information suggests that he was framed, with the real culprit being his supposed victim, Peter Pettigrew. Additionally, regarding the charge of Conspiracy to Commit Murder, referring to the betrayal of the Potter family to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, first-hand testimony once again strongly implicates Peter Pettigrew instead.” The stern witch eyed the other occupants in the room. “Gentlemen, Miss, any closing statements for the record?”

Dumbledore shook his head placidly. Fudge squirmed uncomfortably. Lily raised her hand. “I trust that the Ministry will do its utmost in the pursuit of justice,” she said, “and to rectify the damages caused by its past mistakes.”

Was that a hint of a smile on Madam Bones’s face? Surely not. She tapped the milky white sphere with her wand again, then took it in hand and stood up. “Thank you all for your cooperation,” she said pointedly, eyeing the Minister. “I had best get this down to the Aurors immediately, so we can begin the search for our good friend Mr. Pettigrew. Shacklebolt, with me. We need to discuss how to handle your assignment going forward.” She swept out of the room, followed by the stoic form of Kingsley Shacklebolt. Left behind were Minister Fudge, Professor Dumbledore, the unknown witch in pink, and the unknown Auror still standing by the door. And Lily herself, of course.

“Mrs. Potter,” Fudge said, rounding on her immediately, “you’re really… you? Back  from…”

“I have no memory of being dead,” Lily told him before he could get the words out. “Maybe I was never really dead after all.” She glanced furtively at Dumbledore. She didn’t want to go too far off script, but she also wasn’t about to make up any experiences of the afterlife.

“Yes,” Fudge cried, seizing on this more palatable explanation. “That must be right! You-Know-Who didn’t kill you, he simply… put you out of commission for a while!” His voice was very weak, probably because he knew Lily Potter had been killed via the Killing Curse, not traditionally known for just putting its targets “out of commission.”

On the other hand, a certain boy named Harry Potter had survived the Curse not once now, but twice. But since she had no better explanation for this than anybody else, she preferred to steer the conversation away from that particular subject.

Come to think of it, was Harry’s second Killing Curse survival common knowledge? She knew that Hermione and Ron knew about it, but that didn’t mean the public at large did.

“I’ve been talking it over with Dumbledore,” she said, putting that question aside for now. “His theory is that when Voldemort tried to kill me and-- and Harry, _something_ happened.” She ignored Fudge’s undignified squeak when she said Voldemort’s name. “Something that bound my soul to his, somehow. And neither of us fully died that night. And so, when Voldemort came back yester--” She stopped, re-counted the days, and corrected herself. “Two days ago-- I came back too.”

Halfway through her explanation, Fudge’s face darkened, and he gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Come now, Mrs. Potter,” he said. “You-Know-Who has been gone for over a decade. There is no way for any wizard, even one as terrible as he, to come back from the dead.”

Lily stared at him. “I’m standing right here.”

He waved off her objection with a frustrated gesture. “We just determined that you were never truly dead, Mrs. Potter. But He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named--” He grimaced. “We have had peace for thirteen years. The idea of _his_ return-- it simply doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Shaking her head slowly, Lily knew further argument was pointless. This was Cornelius Fudge, after all. There was a reason his name made little boys cry.

Or would one day. Probably not yet.

“In any event, Mrs. Potter,” Fudge continued, “we need to discuss the details of your press release.”

“Sorry,” Lily said, her attention now fully on the Minister again, “my what?”

“There are all sorts of terrible rumors flying around about you, you know!” he said. “The best way to quell those rumors would be to hold an event where we can officially reveal you to the public, showing the world that you are alive and reassuring them that this is _unequivocally_ good news!” From the way he said that, it was clear he was referring to their discussion just a few moments ago about her being linked somehow to Voldemort.

“That hardly seems necessary,” Lily said. “The _Prophet_ has been doing a good job of keeping the people up to date, from what I hear.”

“Even the _Daily Prophet_ will be questioned if you stay cooped up in the Ministry all the time,” Fudge said with a nervous chuckle.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Lily told him. “As soon as we’re all done here, I’m going straight to Diagon Alley.”

“Are you,” Fudge said weakly. “That’ll be… quite a shock…”

Lily decided then that there was no more value in talking to the Minister at all. She glanced at Dumbledore, who had been standing patiently that whole time, and said, “In fact, I think I’ll be on my way now.”

“ _Hem hem_ ,” the woman in pink said, the same sort of blatant half-cough she’d used to interrupt earlier.

Lily stopped, halfway turned to the door. “...Yes?”

“It’s just that I trust you will take the time, Mrs. Potter,” the woman said, “to truly think about your options, and where you stand… and I trust you will soon see what the right choices are.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Lily asked. That had sounded vaguely like a threat, and if threats were on the table now, Lily really preferred to have something to call her better than “the woman in pink.”

The woman puffed up to her full height, which wasn’t that tall, and said, “Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. Dolores Umbridge.”

There was a brief pause, and then Lily burst out laughing.

 

* * *

  

She stood in the middle of Diagon Alley, gazing up at the marble pillars that flanked the entrance to Gringotts. Just getting that far had been very interesting -- mindful of Fudge’s comments about public visibility, she had walked down the length of the Alley openly, without obscuring her identity by any magical or mundane means. And she’d wondered, before setting out, whether anybody would really notice. Was Lily Potter _that_ big a deal, that random people on the street would recognize her and feel the need to gawk?

Apparently… yes.

She blamed the _Daily Prophet_. She hadn’t had a chance to read it yet, but she’d spotted a copy on her way through the Leaky Cauldron, and there had been a nice big photo of the other Lily Potter taking up most of the front page. It was a good photo, too; Lily looked proud and determined, almost daring the world to come at her. It was probably from shortly before the Potters went into hiding, so she’d been full in the middle of a war at the time.

And Lily looked more like _that_ Lily again. She’d had another chat with Dumbledore before leaving the Ministry, and after she’d explained the way Remus had stripped away some of his Transfigurations, he’d stopped and applied them again. He took a little more time at it, too, claiming that they should resist a simple _Revelio_ this time.

And so, as she walked down the Alley, uncharmed and unhooded, people had a very easy time recognizing her as Lily Potter.

To be fair, that had technically been true her whole life. As a little girl, going out in public with her family had always meant ignoring stares and whispers. But there had been a respectful, almost reverential quality to it all, and it had always been tied to her father -- or, rarely, her mother, especially near anything to do with Quidditch. When she was an older teen, free to wander on her own, she’d still been stared at some, but only until people figured out why she looked familiar. They never cared about her for her own sake.

Now, though, people were intensely interested specifically in Lily Potter, and it was kind of disconcerting. At least nobody had actually approached her.

She walked up the steps and through the grand brass doors of Gringotts.

She was surprised to see that the lobby was noticeably different. She had already been surprised by the Leaky Cauldron, but at least there she had known intellectually that Hannah was too young to have taken over yet. Gringotts, she had thought, would be eternal.

Oh, well. She supposed they must have renovated at some point in the next decade. Certainly not while she was alive, though.

The end of June wasn’t traditionally a big shopping season in the Alley, so there was no queue for her to wait in. In fact, multiple tellers seemed unoccupied. She picked the one that looked friendliest.

“Yes?” he said, barely looking up at her. Friendly for a goblin was still a goblin.

“I need to re-establish access to my family vault,” she said, “but I don’t have a key or a wand. Do you have a way for me to prove my identity so I can be granted access?”

He looked up at her, seemingly interested now that she had proven to be a break from the routine. “We do,” he said with a toothy grin. “Come with me and I’ll get you right sorted out.” He rang a bell on his desk, and after a few moments another goblin came rushing up. “Take over,” the teller told the newcomer, and then gestured for Lily to follow.

So she followed, curious. She’d never been in the back offices of Gringotts before. And that was where the goblin was taking her, straight through a nondescript door into a very elegant-looking meeting room. There was an oval table big enough to seat five, a deep cabinet that came about up to her waist, and large windows that looked out over the Alley -- they were probably spelled, because the architecture didn’t make much sense otherwise, but it was still a nice view.

“Sit,” the goblin ordered, and then left her alone for a minute or two. She sat, and waited patiently. When he returned, he was accompanied by a second goblin holding a tray with three objects: a small scroll of blank parchment, a rough disc of black stone, and a crystal vial of a watery, pale green potion.

“I am Gornuk,” the original goblin said, “and I would be _honored_ to assist you in reclaiming your vault.” He gave her that toothy grin again, then waved the second goblin out of the room, leaving the tray on the table.

“I’m very glad to hear that,” Lily said, unsure why Gornuk would be so enthusiastic about helping her. It wasn’t out of a commitment to customer service, she knew that much.

“Here is the procedure,” Gornuk said. “First, you prick your finger. Second, you drip your blood on the parchment. Third, you drip your blood on the stone.” He stopped there and waggled his little goblin eyebrows.

Feeling almost baited, Lily asked, “What do I do with the potion?”

“You hope you don’t have to find out,” Gornuk said, and then he was holding out a small blade made of bronze. So much for ‘pricking’ her finger.

She took it, and moved to hold her hands over the parchment, feeling nervous despite herself. Gornuk was kind enough to unscroll it for her. “Anything else I should know?”

“Probably,” Gornuk replied cheerfully. And then she did it, she cut her finger, the bronze knife slicing easily and deeply into her skin. She couldn’t hold back a wince, which seemed to please the goblin. That figured.

Maybe she should have been more cautious, she thought, even as she watched a drop of blood fall from her finger to the brown parchment. Asked more questions. Really dug into things until she figured out why Gornuk was acting like he was pulling one over on her. She knew goblins could never _really_ be trusted with anything sensitive.

But, frankly, what choice did she have? She’d been over this already, back in the Ministry holding cell. If she was going to get anything done, she needed access to money, and that meant the Potter family vault. And since she was going to do it anyway, she might as well get it over with.

After three or four drops of blood had rained onto the parchment, Gornuk waved her on. She moved her hand and let a few more drops fall on the disc of black stone. Then she pulled her hand back. “I can heal the cut now, right?” she asked.

“Sure, sure,” Gornuk said dismissively. His attention was on the parchment now.

Of course, healing the cut was easier said than done. It was just a small flesh wound, but she also had no wand yet, and the cut was on one of the fingers she used most in wandless casting. She really had to focus for a few seconds before her finger tingled with the comforting sensation of successful repair.

When she looked at him again, Gornuk was still peering intently at the parchment. The blood she had dripped onto it had soaked in and spread unevenly into lots of lines and curves, forming clear, legible writing as if in red ink, but not in any script she could read. It was probably Goblin. Or whatever the name of their language actually was -- she couldn't quite remember. 

“It says here,” Gornuk said slowly, “that you hold primary blood rights to vault six hundred and eighty seven.”

Thinking back to many childhood visits, Lily nodded. “That sounds right.”

Still clutching the parchment, Gornuk hurried over to the cabinet. He pulled one of the drawers open, revealing densely-packed files organized neatly in numerical order. It took him just a moment to locate the file marked _687_ , and just another to have it out and open on the table.

“Six eighty seven is the Potter family vault,” Gornuk paraphrased from the file, “currently held in stewardship until the legal majority of Harry James Potter, the oldest known member of the main Potter line.”  He glanced at the parchment again, still in his hand. “But _you_ have primary blood rights to the vault, and you are…” He squinted at the bloody writing. “...approximately twenty-one years, six months, and three weeks old.”

He flipped through a few pages from the file, as Lily continued to watch curiously. “The Potter family has never negotiated a special exemption from the Family Vault Inheritance Act of 1899. According to the standard treaty, control of a family’s vault goes to the oldest family member with primary blood rights.” Gornuk glanced up at Lily, an inscrutable expression on his goblin face. “As you are older than Harry James Potter, you supersede his right, and are owed control of vault six hundred eighty seven in full, including all its contents.”

“Well,” Lily said. “That’s… why I’m here, after all.”

“This… this is above my pay grade, unfortunately,” Gornuk said, looking genuinely mournful. “Please wait here while I fetch the Chief Account Manager.”

“No problem,” Lily said, and she watched as the goblin gathered up all of the papers spread across the table, including the bloody parchment, and hurried out of the room with them.

So, like she’d expected, Gringotts used blood magic to establish identity in cases like this. She wondered how the parchment worked. Her own blood was obviously not on file anywhere -- and wasn’t that a creepy thought -- so the way it had read not just her family line but the actual number of her family vault…

A quiet clunking sound stole her attention, and she looked back at the tray, which still held the potion and the disc. Except it wasn’t a disc anymore -- the black stone had puffed up into a near-spherical shape, and now it was rocking slightly, back and forth, kind of like a weird little egg about to hatch.

Then the door opened again, and Gornuk entered, leading another goblin, this one dressed in a very fine miniature suit. The Chief Account Manager, she assumed.

“Mrs. Potter,” the new arrival said smoothly, reaching out to shake her hand. “I am Blordak. I understand you wish to reclaim your control over the Potter family vault?”

“Er,” Lily said, reaching out in return by reflex, “yes, that’s right.”

“I see, I see,” Blordak said, and he sat himself at the table across from her. “Well, you’ll be glad to know that the bloodwork checks out, and we will certainly honor your primary rights to the vault. I just have one small… curiosity, if you don’t mind.”

“What is it?” Lily asked.

His little goblin eyes bore into her unnaturally green ones. “Who are you really? Because Lily Potter _née_ Evans was a Potter by marriage, not by birth. And as a Muggle-born, she would never have primary blood rights over any vault.”

There was a long silence as it slowly dawned on Lily that yes, they really had just torn her cover story to shreds -- and worse, they had the clear evidence they needed to go public with it if they wanted. On the other hand, Blordak didn’t seem malevolent or manipulative at all; he just had, as he put it, a small curiosity.

And it occurred to her, too, that she had never actually given Gornuk her name. Technically, she had never lied to them. She had let her blood do the talking.

“My name is Lily Potter,” she told them. “As you have seen, I am a direct descendant of the Potter line. I am…” She struggled to find the right words, to decide how much to share. “I am not where I should be.”

Blordak grinned at her. Unlike Gornuk’s earlier predatory grins, his seemed almost conspiratorial. “Do not worry,” he said. “As long as you are honest with Gringotts, we will not out you to your Ministry.”

“I appreciate that,” Lily said dimly. Had she said enough? Was Blordak satisfied with her answer?

He must have been -- he stood suddenly, and stepped over to the tray. “I believe your key is ready,” he said.

The black disc-turned-egg had stopped wiggling. Blordak picked it up, then brought it down firmly onto the table. There was a loud crack, and the egg split in two -- and out of it spilled a glittering golden key, like a little metallic yolk. The goblin plucked the key from among fragments of stone, brushed it off with his sleeve, and held it out to her.

“The key to vault six hundred and eighty seven, my lady,” he said formally.

“Thank you,” Lily said, and she took it from him.

“With that,” Blordak said, “we are ready to visit the vault in question.”

He led her out of the meeting room and over to the carts that traversed the vaults. Gornuk left them then, presumably going back to his station in the lobby. She expected Blordak to leave too, to hand her over to one of the usual cart attendants, but instead he hopped in to drive her personally.

The ride on the tracks was just how she remembered it, which was strangely comforting. She couldn’t help but lean into the curves, smiling as she remembered how much fun she’d had in the carts as a child.

And then the vault itself -- it was the same vault, no question, but she was surprised by how… sparse it looked. There was a lot of gold, to be sure, but it was only a fraction of what she was used to. She knew that made her seem horrifically spoiled… there was still enough money in the vault to live off of for years to come, and that was what mattered.

Still, it was interesting to realize just how much her parents had contributed by their own merits. In a weird way, she was proud of them.

She had to buy a bag off Blordak for five sickles, which was outrageous, but it was better than walking around with galleons loose in her pockets. Once she had filled the bag, the two of them returned up to the lobby, and thus her business at Gringotts was concluded.

“Thank you for your patronage, Lily Potter,” Blordak said, giving her a bow near the brass double doors that led outside.

“Thank you for your assistance,” she returned, and started to turn away, but then she had a thought. She stopped, and looked back, glad her goblin escort hadn’t disappeared yet. “Wait,” she said, “I have a little curiosity of my own. What was that green potion for?”

Blordak looked very pleased. “Consider it,” he said slowly, “fraud deterrent.” And he laughed. Lily had never heard a goblin truly laugh before. It was hideous.

“Right,” she said quickly. “Thank you. I’ll be off, then.”

“Please, come again,” Blordak told her much too cheerfully, and he watched as she hurried away, back out into the Alley.

At the bottom of the steps, she stopped, took a deep breath, and enjoyed the warmth of a sunny day. She was in Diagon Alley, and now she had money! Her head nearly spun with all the things she wanted to buy. But she knew what her absolute first priority had to be.

She hurried directly to Ollivanders.

She had never owned an Ollivanders wand before, but she’d heard a lot about them. It seemed like every year, wizards and witches her parents’ age or older bemoaned the closing of Mr. Ollivander’s shop. Half of them seemed upset that a tradition that stretched back thousands of years had been broken; the other half just wanted an artisan wandmaker back in Diagon Alley. By the time she had set off to Hogwarts, the primary source of wands for incoming Hogwarts students was a man named Mr. Kiddell. To hear the older generations tell it, Kiddell’s wands just didn’t compare.

She pushed into Ollivanders, the bell on the door gently chiming above her, and grinned. It looked exactly how she expected, based on all the stories she’d heard. It was very cramped, every inch of the walls covered in shelves overflowing with small rectangular boxes. Dust tickled her nose, and she had to fight not to sneeze, feeling it would somehow be disrespectful.

“Dear me, dear me,” a man said, appearing before her. He was old, with thin white hair, but he still possessed a certain vibrance. She felt it safe to assume he was Mr. Ollivander himself. “What an unexpected sight.”

“Hello,” she greeted politely. “I’m here to see about…” She trailed off because Ollivander was tilting his head back and forth, squinting at her. “Is there a problem?” she said eventually.

“I remember Lily Evans,” he said, getting a bit closer and staring into her eyes. “Bright girl. Willow, ten and a quarter inches. You are not her.”

“Maybe not,” Lily said, feeling a bit cornered, “but I’m here to buy a wand regardless.” Was every place she went in Diagon Alley going to figure her out? The image flashed through her mind of Madam Malkin declaring that her measurements were all wrong--

“Indeed,” Ollivander allowed, and he backed off. “Not your first wand, I assume, but your first of mine. Do you have your previous wand with you?”

“No,” Lily told him. “But I can tell you that it was pine and unicorn hair, twelve and a half inches.”

He turned smartly and reached for a nearby box. “We know what to avoid, then!”

That first wand he gave her to try (ash and dragon heartstring, ten inches) was no good.

The second wand he gave her to try (yew and unicorn hair, thirteen inches) was even worse.

She couldn’t quite read the expression on his face, as he continued to hand her wands that didn’t work for her. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard and he didn’t seem invested at all in the wands she was trying, snatching them away again just a heartbeat or two after she took them in hand.

Then he stopped, and sighed, and took a bit more time to select his next choice. It was willow and dragon heartstring, eleven inches. He still took it away again, but he shook his head ruefully. “I should have known,” he muttered to himself, and the next wand was very similar: willow and unicorn hair, ten inches.

She held that one for a few seconds, the longest of any since the start, and Ollivander just stood there and watched her for a change.

“Is this it?” she asked. She hadn’t felt that rush she remembered from when she’d found her first wand…

“Not that one, no,” he replied, finally grabbing it away from her. “But I wonder…” He spent a few moments scanning his piles of unmarked boxes until he somehow identified the specific one he wanted. “Give this one a try,” he said, holding it out to her.

She opened the box and took out the wand, and -- and there it was. Warmth, and belonging, and power. With half a thought, she let out a few celebratory sparks.

“Willow,” Ollivander informed her. “Ten and a quarter inches.” He raised his eyebrows, marking the significance of this.

She’d heard a lot of wand descriptions in the past fifteen minutes, but that one stuck out at her. “That’s what my-- what you sold to Lily Evans,” she said.

“Correct,” he said. “But hers was unicorn hair. And yours… a phoenix feather.”

Willow. Phoenix feather. Ten and a quarter inches. “I’ll take it,” she said, as if there was any doubt.

Seven galleons poorer, she left the shop, her new wand carefully stowed away. She didn’t know nearly enough about wandlore to understand the full significance, but she thought it was very curious, and not a little convenient, that her new wand had the same external properties as the wand that had belonged to the woman she was technically impersonating. She wondered what had become of it, something she had never had cause to wonder before -- Voldemort had murdered James and Lily Potter, but he wouldn’t have destroyed their wands, surely? And he couldn’t have stolen them, since he himself was all but killed just moments later. And then there was the phoenix feather, which she knew was very rare. The only phoenix feather core she knew about for sure belonged to her father. She wondered what it meant. She might actually have to do some research, when she got a chance.

First, though, she had a lot more shopping to--

Peace and serenity washed over her, and a great silvery-white bird flew up to her. A phoenix, like in her new wand, she thought, and then her mind registered what it was telling her.

Out of the phoenix, Dumbledore’s voice came quiet, and almost strained: “Please return to Hogwarts immediately. Fawkes will assist you.”

Fawkes will…

The next moment, there was a burst of flame in the air above the Patronus. Then Fawkes was there, his wings wide and resplendent, his plumage shifting red and orange, almost like a living flame in the midday sun.

She was in the middle of Diagon Alley. This was a huge spectacle. Something told her that Dumbledore would never do this unless it was very, very important.

She held out an arm, so Fawkes could land on it. “You’re going to assist me, are you?”

Fawkes did swoop down to her outstretched arm, but instead of settling his weight on it, he grasped it in his talons and began to lift. Then Lily’s world went red as unburning fire consumed her, and she stumbled slightly before her feet steadied themselves on the floor of Dumbledore’s office in Hogwarts.

“Lily. Good,” Dumbledore himself said as the phoenix flew gracefully across the room to his perch. He came out from behind his desk. “I have summoned the others, but I wanted a chance to speak with you privately first, in case your… _unique_ knowledge might assist us in this situation.”

“What situation?” Lily asked, still a little disoriented. She tried to think back to the stories she remembered, wondering if there was some _other_ end-of-year crisis she’d forgotten hearing about. Or maybe her father had never mentioned it?

“Harry--your father-- has been… abducted from Hogwarts.”

Lily wrapped her head around this. No, this didn’t fit with anything, she didn’t know anything about this -- this was new, or this had been kept secret. But who would even do something like this? No, wrong question -- who _could_ do something like this?

“By who?” she asked, still trying at the same time to figure it out herself. Who had the freedom to move about the castle without suspicion? Pettigrew, in rat form? Harry would never go with him willingly, though, and a rat couldn’t very well drag a boy off the grounds.

She had to believe she knew the answer, if she could just realize it. Her arrival hadn’t changed things so much that there would be some new, completely unknown party in play. Maybe from the other angle -- what agents did Voldemort have available? One of the Death Eaters in the graveyard? Surely Dumbledore wasn’t so lax with security as to let any of _them_ in the castle. Someone already on the inside, then? But a Death Eater on the inside would mean--

\--that she was a _colossal idiot_ \--

Dumbledore actually responded then, his voice firm as his eyes bore into her own, and he spoke the name she had somehow failed to think about even once since falling back to this very specific moment in time--

He said,  “Alastor Moody.”


	5. A Master Class in Almost Not Winning

“No,” Lily said, to herself, _at_ herself. This really was her fault -- this was a thing she _knew_. It wasn’t some half-forgotten story told at her bedside as she drifted off to sleep, this was important, this was a full week of lectures in Concealment and Disguise, this was a major case study on What To Do as well as What To Look Out For, this was _infamous_ , and it had  _completely slipped her mind._

“No,” she said again, louder this time. “Not by--” She broke off, and considered how to explain this. Would he even believe her? Surely he had to; she spoke with the weight of the future, after all.

“Listen, I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said. “The good news is that it wasn’t actually Moody who did this, so you don’t need to feel betrayed. The bad news...” She tugged at her hair, reminded again, incongruously, that it was longer and wavier than she was used to. “The bad news is that Moody is actually an impostor and has been all year. A Death Eater named Barty Crouch, Jr. has been in your school teaching your students this entire time and you had no idea.”

The silence was heavy in the room. At least, she thought it was, until she looked closer and realized that Dumbledore did not seemed surprised in the slightest.

“I suspected as much,” he said, almost in a murmur. At her expression, his eyes glinted dangerously. “Not everything, and certainly not the whole time,” he said. “But when he took Harry from the castle-- I knew.”

“You knew,” Lily repeated incredulously. “Then why would you--” She stopped, and shook her head. They could argue about what-ifs and should-haves later. “Look,” she said, “this isn’t how things happened, you know, last time. If you’re hoping I can tell you where they went or what his plan is, then I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“But you can assist in the search, yes?” Dumbledore said. “You were an Auror, were you not?”

Lily paused, then smiled. “Yes I was,” she said. “And yes I can.”

Without further delay, she gave him a thirty-second summary of Barty Crouch, Jr.’s methods and motives. She had to get it all out quickly, because once other people arrived, she wouldn’t be able to speak up about her future knowledge without completely blowing her cover.

Even as rushed as she was, she thought she had covered all the important points by the time Dumbledore lifted a hand and looked off to the side for a moment. “The others will be here imminently,” he said, and he meant it, because before she could answer there was a knock on the door.

“Enter,” the Headmaster called while moving back to sit behind his desk.

The first through the door turned out to be a young-looking Professor McGonagall -- young from Lily’s perspective, at least. The next couple of decades would be rough on the stern Transfiguration Mistress. She entered with a familiar-looking frown, but lost it when she spotted Lily already standing there in the office.

The older witch, who had always seemed so proper and put-together as Hogwarts’s Headmistress, seemed to fight with herself for just a second -- before surprising Lily by stepping forward and pulling her into a hug. Lily returned the embrace cautiously.

McGonagall sniffed, then pulled away. “My apologies,” she said to the room at large, before dabbing at the corner of her eye with a handkerchief.

Lily sought something to say to reassure her, but couldn’t come up with anything before two more figures followed McGonagall into the room. She recognized both: Aurors Shacklebolt and Tonks, the latter in her apparent preferred form, complete with pink feathery hair. Shacklebolt gave her a quick appraising once-over as he entered, but otherwise did not acknowledge her; Tonks at least gave her a small smile.

“Thank you for coming,” Dumbledore told the newcomers seriously. “I had planned on giving both of you longer to think about what we discussed, but circumstances have forced our hand.” He looked at Shacklebolt and Tonks, his eyes piercing. “Kingsley. Nymphadora. I asked you both to make a decision. It must be now.”

Lily shifted her weight anxiously. Did they really have time for this?

There was only a brief pause before Shacklebolt spoke. “You-Know-Who is the greatest threat our world has known for half a century,” he said. “If there is even the slightest chance he is active again, we can’t waste time appeasing Fudge. We need to do something about it. You’re going to do something about it. I want to help.”

“You-Know-Who destroyed my mother’s family,” Tonks said after that. “The ones he didn’t kill, he turned evil, or crazy, or both. I didn’t become an Auror to play at bureaucracy. I became an Auror to do some good in the world, to balance the scales. If he’s back, then this is exactly where I need to be. I want to help, too.” 

Dumbledore nodded, and he smiled with some warmth. “Then I am pleased to say,” he declared, “that the two of you are now the newest members of the recently re-established Order of the Phoenix.” Fawkes sang a few heartwarming notes from his perch to mark the occasion. 

Dumbledore gave them all a moment to be proud, then continued. “Unfortunately, we have no time for celebration. I called you here because we have a matter of dire urgency on our hands. Less than ten minutes ago, Harry Potter was abducted from this castle by a man working in the service of Voldemort.” 

Professor McGonagall gasped audibly -- apparently she hadn’t been in the loop yet. Shacklebolt and Tonks both stiffened, but were professional enough not to show their shock or dismay any further. “Do we know who?” Shacklebolt asked. 

“Barty Crouch, Jr.,” Dumbledore said simply. Glancing at Tonks, he added, “Barty Crouch’s son was sent to Azkaban in 1982, convicted of multiple uses of the Cruciatus Curse. He was thought to have died there. Clearly, this was not the case.” 

“Do we know for sure he’s a Death Eater?” Shacklebolt asked. “He might be a rogue agent, acting on his own agenda.” 

“We do,” Dumbledore said, with the benefit of Lily’s explanation. “Which is why it is imperative that we apprehend Crouch and rescue Harry before he is delivered to Voldemort.” 

“Do we know where he’s going?” Tonks asked. “I mean-- do we know where You-Know-Who is?” Her voice trembled a bit; this was probably the first time she had acknowledged, out loud in her own words, that Voldemort had returned. 

“We do not,” Dumbledore answered, “but neither, I believe, does Crouch.” He waved Lily forward, and she stepped up impatiently, feeling the minutes tick away while they stood around and talked. “Miss Tonks, I would like you and Lily here to work together. Investigate the graveyard where Voldemort was returned to his body, and see if you can determine where he went next -- if you are lucky, perhaps Crouch followed that same path.” He looked at the taller Auror next. “Kingsley, you and I will take a different approach. I believe we will start at the Crouch family home.” 

Tonks turned to Lily, a slightly worried expression on her face. “I don’t know this graveyard,” she said. 

“I’ve been there,” Lily said, even though she’d been rather out of it at the time. But she knew where it was geographically, at least in a general sense, and she had a clearer image of it from when Dumbledore had forced her to relive the memory -- she could Apparate there without too much trouble, she thought. She would make it work. 

“Minerva,” Dumbledore was saying, “I will of course entrust the castle to your care until we return.” 

The witch’s lips were a thin line, but she nodded resolutely. “Bring him home, Albus,” she said. 

Dumbledore selected an ivory figurine of a Merman from his desk. “Desperate times…” he muttered, then pointed his wand at it. “ _Portus._ ” It shuddered and flashed blue. He held it out for the four of them to all touch, explaining, “To outside the grounds.” 

Lily pressed a finger to the figurine, and a few seconds later found herself whirling around through the tumbling chaos of Portkey travel. It was a very short trip, though, and they landed with a jolt. 

“Remember,” Dumbledore told them, “our first priority is to rescue Harry safely. But if you can capture Crouch as well, I believe there are many fascinating questions he could answer for us.” 

Lily wasn’t even listening to him anymore. She turned to Tonks and held out her arm. “Come on,” she said. 

Tonks reached out and held on. 

Fixing the image of the graveyard in her mind, concentrating on its location, Lily turned in place. She felt herself being squeezed through a tube, and then the two of them popped into being among tall slabs of grey stone. 

The echo of their Apparition faded. It was quiet and peaceful. 

Compared to her memory of two nights ago, the graveyard looked much less foreboding in the light of early afternoon. The rows of gravestones were much less maze-like, and the life-size statues that dotted the yard were appropriately angelic. The graveyard was surrounded by a waist-high wall of stone, beyond which Lily could see a large manor, which looked to be in some disrepair. In another direction, further from where they appeared, the church lay nestled against the side of the hill that stretched down to the town of Little Hangleton. 

Tonks was scanning the area carefully, her wand already in hand. Lily followed suit, feeling a small thrill when she pulled out her new willow wand. It was unfamiliar, but felt full of promise between her fingers, not discomfort. Then, almost in unison, the two of them began to cast a collection of standard detection charms. 

There was a patch of grass nearby, a relatively open area, like a clearing among the gravestones. Lily was drawn to it, images filling her head -- the young boy, Harry Potter, locked in a struggle against the tall and somewhat disfigured Voldemort. She remembered the beam of light that had connected their wands, and the chaos that had surrounded them all once it was gone. It had happened… here. 

And now she could see it again, thanks to the detection charms. 

Well, it was not quite accurate to say that the detection charms they were both using allowed anyone to ‘see’ magic, but it was generally considered the simplest analogy. And taking the analogy further, different spells had different colors -- meaning not the color of the flashes of light that accompanied a successful cast, but the color of the residue left behind after the cast was complete. _Expelliarmus_ , for example, left a pale blue residue, while the Killing Curse left a streak of deepest black. 

Of course, since it was all an analogy, spell residue didn’t actually have any color at all. But Lily, at least, had always found it helpful to think in such terms. 

The clearing was absolutely drenched in spell residue, colors drowning out colors, making it very difficult to pick out any individual spells. Even so, she noticed clear examples of all three Unforgivable Curses in the mix. She had to wonder, for a moment -- how on earth had her father survived this? 

“Oh, Merlin,” she heard Tonks exclaim from somewhere behind her. She turned to look. 

The pink-haired witch was standing a bit away, having wandered in the opposite direction. She was staring at one specific spot. It was too far for her detection charms to help, so Lily started forward, and only then noticed a particularly distinctive crested gravestone to the left. Suddenly she knew what that spot was, and she felt cold. 

“This is where you… came back,” Tonks said, in a hesitant, somber tone. 

“It’s where I appeared,” Lily answered, coming up beside her. “It was… very confusing.” And then, she stopped. 

The space in the graveyard where she had emerged after falling through the floor of the Department of Mysteries was practically glowing with residue, a vibrant, almost phosphorescent purple. She had never seen or felt anything like it before. 

“Do you remember the transition?” Tonks asked distractedly, almost like she was entranced. 

Lily couldn’t blame her. It was kind of mesmerizing. “I do, more or less,” she said, briefly reliving her unwitting trip back from the future. “Imagine flying through the air, but the air is actually the ground, and you have no idea what’s happening or if it’s ever going to end.” She shook herself, then turned away. “That’s what I remember, anyway. Come on, we can’t waste any more time.” 

Tonks nodded slowly, then turned and followed Lily back towards the clearing. After examining it for a few seconds, she remarked, “If Crouch Jr. did Apparate here, there’s no way we’ll pick that trace out in the middle of this mess.” 

“I agree,” Lily said. “And he’s clearly not in the graveyard itself.” She pointed up at the manor house. “We need to take a look in there.” 

“I’m with you,” Tonks said, and the two witches set off at a jog, hopping over the stone wall and approaching the back of the manor. There was a door there, almost completely obscured by ivy, but easy to spot at the moment because it was sitting half open. Tonks and Lily glanced at each other and nodded. 

Lily couldn’t say that her official Auror duties thus far had included breaking into any homes for real, but she remembered the lessons on how to do it. She tapped herself on the head with a Disillusionment Charm, pointed at her feet for a small local Silencing Charm, and started on the wand motions that would check the doorway for wards or jinxes. 

When she was done -- the doorway was fine -- she slipped through, entering a large kitchen. She knew Tonks was right beside her, even though the other witch had also Disillusioned herself. And given that the inside of the house was dark, the chameleon-like effect of Disillusionment served just as well as true invisibility. 

“Clear,” Lily reported after a moment. There was nothing of interest in the kitchen. 

“One thing doesn’t make sense to me,” Tonks said conversationally as they moved through the far door into the hall. They were near the front of the house now, as evidenced by the large windows flanking the front door. “How did this Crouch, Jr. fellow break into Hogwarts in the first place? And how did he get Harry out of the castle?” Then she paused, and in a much quieter voice, said, “There’s a person on the second floor.” 

Lily turned -- she had been looking out the windows and down the hill at the town below. “Just one?” she asked, before checking for herself. 

“That’s all I detect,” Tonks said. “They’re staying put in the back corner there.” 

Indeed, as Lily could now also tell, there was a single human presence on the second floor of the manor, tucked into the far back corner as if that would hide them. She started for the stairs, and remembered Tonks’s earlier question. “He used Polyjuice Potion,” she said. “He was impersonating one of the professors -- Alastor Moody.” 

There was a dull thud and a muttered curse. Tonks must have slipped on the stairs -- with their feet silenced, it was the only explanation for the noise. “Really?” her voice floated up. “Mad-Eye?” 

“ _Depulso_ ,” a gravelly voice incanted from the top of the stairs, and before Lily could react, she was shoved off her feet, falling backwards and down. She was airborne for about half a second before she slammed into the wall, narrowly missing the large window she'd been gazing out of just moments before. 

She slid down to a crumpled heap on the floor in front of the stairs. The world spun around her as she fought to regain her feet. One of her ribs twinged in protest; she cast about for her wand -- it was on the ground beside her -- and pointed it at her side. “ _Episkey_ ,” she muttered, and breathed as her torso flushed hot and then cold. Then, wand up and ready, she started back up the stairs. 

Tonks was still invisible, but she was easy to find, because spells raining down from the second-floor landing were splashing against a shield about two-thirds of the way up. Whoever was up there was also invisible -- but Lily didn’t need to see him to know it was Crouch. 

They had to get off the stairs -- they were in a very poor position, defensively speaking. Lily had only been out of it for fifteen seconds, twenty max, but she didn’t know how long Tonks could hold up the shield. 

“ _Visus Coactus_ ,” she cast, pointing at the top of the stairs. She was expecting to unveil the form of Alastor Moody, or maybe even of Crouch himself if his Polyjuice Potion had worn off, but instead, nothing happened.

Of course, she thought to herself. She knew how he was invisible now, and it wasn't Disillusionment. 

Beside her, Tonks called out, “Swap!”, and almost without thought Lily raised her wand and began to shield. She still couldn’t see her pink-haired companion, but she could hear her ragged breathing. 

The incoming spells weren’t that hard to deal with -- mid-level curses, mostly. Crouch was surely capable of much more dangerous magic; if he wasn’t using it, there was only one good explanation -- he _wanted_ them pinned down on the stairs even more than he wanted them gone. Lily couldn’t figure why that would be, but she wasn’t going to complain. 

“I have an idea,” Tonks said breathlessly. “Push forward when you can.” Then Lily heard her whisper, “ _Adhaerens admuro_ ,” and she knew Tonks was no longer by her side. By the sound of that spell, the other witch was taking a bit of a different route to the top of the stairs -- literally. The spell was for walking on walls. 

Now that she wasn’t covering for anyone else, Lily relaxed her shield and began to charge up the remainder of the steps. She decided to try something -- maybe it was silly, but part of her would feel better about being bested in the Department of Mysteries if she worked out how to do it to others. She hadn’t really had a chance to plan it out or anything, but… 

She deflected away a few more curses and hexes, then pointed her wand, targeting the floor of the second-story landing, still a few steps up from her position. “ _Cenoso_ ,” she said, and she watched carefully. 

The wood floor at the top of the steps slackened and softened like mud. There was a short bark of surprise from the invisible Crouch as his feet sank into the muck. Lily nodded to herself, then hit him with a quick “ _Obfenso,_ ” knocking him onto his back. Then, so she could actually see her handiwork, she finished with “ _Accio cloak!_ ” 

She knew what Alastor Moody looked like mostly from a portrait that overlooked the Auror Department at the Ministry in her time. Come to think of it, it was dated back to his retirement, so it probably already existed. It just wasn’t on display yet -- she would’ve spotted it that morning as she walked through the Ministry. If she had, maybe she would have remembered about Crouch in time to prevent this whole mess. 

Alastor Moody’s stout and grizzled form came into view as the invisibility cloak slipped off and away from him, flying into Lily’s grasp. He -- Crouch -- was sprawled on his back, half-sunk into the floor, his borrowed face contorted with fury. And despite the portrait she had seen countless times, it wasn’t until she saw Moody’s electric-blue right eye in person that she suddenly realized just how much of an idiot they’d been. What good was invisibility against someone who could see you anyway? 

Crouch lifted his wand, and there was a very bright flash of light. Lily reflexively flinched away, momentarily blinded, and felt her way back a couple of steps until she could use the stairs themselves as cover. She’d forgotten to make him stick to the floor, she realized. That was a rather important part of it. Next time. 

As her vision slowly recovered, she could hear Crouch awkwardly push up onto his knees on the mud-like floor. He struggled a bit more than she expected, maybe because of his fake leg. But then he jabbed his wand at the floor, reverting it back to solid wood, and her experiment was officially over. 

She was just deciding that she could see well enough to re-engage him when he spun away from her. “No you _don’t_ ,” he growled, but Lily couldn’t tell what he meant until she heard Tonks’s voice from further down the hallway past the landing. The pink-haired witch must have been trying to sneak past Crouch to search for Harry. She must not have realized about his eye yet either. 

Lily stood and ran up the last few steps. The duel was starting in earnest now, with all three of them on equal footing; Crouch was even at a disadvantage, because now he had an Auror on both sides. He was holding his own, though, and was even slowly advancing on Tonks, pushing her back down the hallway. 

Except maybe Tonks was allowing herself to be pushed back, because that was the direction she had wanted to go anyway. 

When she reached the far end of the hall, Tonks made a break for it. She nearly hit Crouch with a spell -- a streak of gray light that broke through his shield, forcing him to shift awkwardly to the side to avoid it -- and then dashed sideways through a doorway into the room beyond. 

Crouch charged after her, and Lily after him. She was pretty sure she knew what they would find in there, and she wasn’t disappointed. It was a large parlor, with a collection of nice furniture arranged in a circle. The only light in the room was from the afternoon sun streaming through a couple of dusty windows. And in the far corner, one of the chairs had been dragged out of place, and a very recognizable teenaged boy had been tied down to it. Harry was awake and looked unharmed, but he was clearly never going to overpower the conjured ropes binding him no matter how hard he struggled. To add insult to injury, he was also gagged. 

Lily had Crouch’s invisibility cloak clutched in her left hand, dragging along the floor. She was still Disillusioned, so there was no point in putting it on, and in fact there was no point in being invisible at all, anyway. Especially now that they had an audience. She was surprised to realize it, but she wanted Harry to see her. She wanted Harry to see Lily Potter fighting to rescue him. 

So, she took a moment to tap herself on the head again, and even as she felt her skin tingle back into visibility, she tossed the cloak off to the side, hoping she’d remember to grab it again later. Spoils of war, and all that. 

But while she was distracted, Tonks stumbled -- literally or figuratively, she couldn’t see, but suddenly Crouch was attacking the other still-invisible witch with a frenzy. And then, just as suddenly, Tonks was down. Lily wasn’t sure which of the Death Eater’s many spells had connected, so she honestly wasn’t sure if Tonks would be okay; for now, she grit her teeth and rejoined the duel in earnest, sending hex after hex at the man who had hurt her temporary partner. 

As Lily and Crouch continued to battle on one side of the room, Harry was still in the corner, struggling against the ropes that bound him to the chair. His eyes were wide and locked onto Lily, not that she could blame him. It’s what she had wanted, after all. But now that he could see her, part of her wished she’d stayed invisible. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself in front of her father, even if that was a weird thing to think right now. 

Lily decided to try to maneuver over to Harry, hoping she might have a spare moment to free him from those bindings. If they were just standard conjured ropes, _Emancipare_ should do it no problem, but it had a short range. She had to get closer. 

That was a mistake. When Crouch realized what she was doing, he flashed a feral grin, and a moment later a beam of dark purple light streaked not at Lily, but at the helpless boy in the chair. 

Lily couldn’t recognize the spell by sight alone -- not taking _any_ chances with her father’s life, she stabbed her wand forward and conjured a mirror-like shield in front of him. She stopped to make sure her shield was strong enough, and as she watched, it deflected the unknown spell off in some harmless direction -- and the next thing she knew, a jet of yellow light struck her outstretched hand. 

The hex blasted her arm back, wrenching her whole body around like a ragdoll on a string. Her wand went flying off, clattering against the floor somewhere. She landed heavily on her side, momentarily stunned. 

Crouch was pretty good, she thought dully, as she heard Harry screaming through his gag. He'd beaten two Aurors in a two-against-one duel. Maybe playing Moody had rubbed off on him. 

She was expecting a follow-up spell to take her out for good, but when nothing happened, she remembered her earlier suspicion that Crouch hadn’t really been trying to kill them. Okay, she thought. Okay. She could work with that. She curled up into a little ball, cradling her arm to her chest. The pain was concentrated in her shoulder, and especially in her hand -- which was a good thing, she realized. If her hand hurt that badly, at least she knew she still had it. 

“Tougher than I expected,” Crouch commented from the far side of the room. He didn’t even sound winded. “But not too much trouble.” 

Curled up as she was, facing away from him, Lily carefully placed her left hand over her right. Her right hand, her dominant hand, had effectively been pulverized, and touching it set off a new blaze of pain. _“Torpens,_ ” she whispered, and felt the agony subside somewhat. There was no way she could fix that kind of damage on her own, but at least she could make it more bearable with a numbing charm. 

“ _Incarcerous_ ,” Crouch said lazily, and Lily found herself wrapped in thick ropes, like the ones holding Harry hostage. He then levitated her just enough to place her on a chair of her own, next to the boy he thought was her son. 

Unlike Harry, she had not been gagged. She tried to think of something clever to say, to bolster the boy’s spirits and maybe rile Crouch up a bit so he would make a mistake, but nothing came to mind. The best she could come up with was just the honest, “What do you want with me?” 

Crouch gave her a very calculating look that looked wrong, somehow, on Moody’s face. “The Dark Lord is very curious about you,” he said, his voice low and fervent. “One little Mudblood witch, barely more than a child, who holds the secrets of Death itself?” He stepped forward and thrust his face uncomfortably close to Lily’s, and she found herself staring at his right eye, his bright electric blue eye, and it was staring straight back at her, as if the magic could see into her soul. 

She also wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about. “What do you mean?” she asked. 

He pulled back slightly, but not as much as she would have preferred. “The Dark Lord would very much like to know how you returned,” he said, “as well as what manner of protection you have placed on the boy.” He glanced over at Harry, who had gone very still, craning his neck to watch the two of them. Lily wondered if he even yet knew that Crouch wasn’t actually Moody. 

“Doesn’t he read the _Prophet_?” She halfheartedly struggled against the ropes binding her to test them, but stopped almost immediately when pain lanced up her arm. She may have numbed the worst of it, but that didn’t mean she could just ignore the injury completely. “From what I understand, they’ve basically figured it all out already.” 

Unfortunately, he didn’t even dignify that with a response. Instead, he turned away and pointed his wand at the far corner of the room. A moment later, ropes sprang up from nowhere to wrap around nothing -- or rather, around the invisible form of Tonks, who Lily really hoped was just stunned. At least, if Crouch was tying her up, she probably wasn’t dead or dying. 

“Nymphadora Tonks,” he offered in commentary. “Mad-Eye’s protégée. He thinks very highly of her.” He paused just long enough for the irony to register, then added, “It’s almost a shame she was caught as well.” 

“Caught?” Lily repeated. “This was a trap, then?” 

He turned slowly to look at her again. “A witch with your reputation,” he said, “should not play dumb.” 

Lily couldn’t help but flush. 

Apparently done talking, Crouch stuck a hand into his pocket, and pulled out a small glass vial with a sickly green potion sloshing around inside. He uncorked it with a tap of his wand, and the smell of stewed knotgrass filled the room. Lily was not a fan, but Crouch didn’t seem bothered at all -- in fact he seemed almost delighted before he tipped the vial back and swallowed the potion like a shot of Firewhiskey. 

And then, to Lily’s horror and disgust, he reached up to his face, grasped his blue magical eye firmly with his fingertips, and popped it out of his eye socket. 

It wasn’t until he was seated and removing Moody’s wooden leg that Lily realized what was happening. The potion must have been some kind of anti-Polyjuice, if there was such a thing, or else some kind of general cleanser; either way, Crouch’s time as Mad-Eye Moody was coming to an end. And indeed, as she watched, his face began to bubble and shift, and his hair began to lighten, and she realized abruptly that this was an _opportunity_. Crouch would be distracted by his transformation, and maybe... 

She took a deep breath, but really had no more time to steel herself than that before she had to act or lose her chance. She tensed her left hand, and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her right. Straightening her fingers as much as she could, she pointed inward at her own chest and quietly cast, “ _Emancipare._ ” She felt the magic flow down her arm and out her fingers, and the spell took effect-- 

Well-- 

Instead of immediately releasing her from her bonds as it should have done, the spell nearly failed completely. She felt the ropes loosen very slightly, maybe enough to wiggle her arms around a bit more, but that was all. She hissed softly to herself in aggravation -- it had been a while since she had outright flubbed a spell like that. _Emancipare_ wasn’t even that complicated. True, she had cast it wandlessly, with her off hand, and with very limited movement, but she really thought she should have done better. And she had wasted her chance, because now Crouch looked like himself again. 

Next to her, Harry started thrashing furiously, shouting something through his gag. Lily wondered if he actually recognized Crouch. She certainly didn’t, not visually; he was taller than Moody, pale and with straw-colored hair, with an almost rapturous expression on his face. 

“It is nice,” he said softly, “to be at home in my own skin again.” Then, moving quickly, he rolled up his left sleeve, revealing a jet-black tattoo of ghoulish design -- a skull with a snake winding out of its mouth. 

How odd to see that on a person, Lily thought, and not just in the pages of a book. 

For a moment, nobody moved. Not even Harry, who had gone still in horror at the sight of the Dark Mark. Then, slowly and deliberately, Crouch brandished his wand and pressed it to the skull. 

A heartbeat later, Lily remembered what that _meant_. And she knew they had overstayed their welcome. 

_“Expelliarmus!”_ she cried, and Crouch looked up at her in shock -- his wand was torn from his fingers and flew through the air into Lily’s left hand. With her greater range of movement from the loosened ropes, she had just barely managed to aim at him, but just barely was enough. And now she had a wand. She cast quickly: _“Emancipare!”_ freed herself properly. _“Stupefy!”_ took out Crouch before he could do anything. Another _“Emancipare!”_ freed Harry. Finally, _“Accio wand!”_ pulled her new willow wand from where it had fallen. It was a bit awkward to catch with her left hand, but she managed. 

“Mum--” Harry gasped, still reeling from everything that had just happened. 

“We need to move,” Lily interrupted, ignoring how wrong it felt to be called that. She handed him Crouch’s wand, or rather Moody’s. “He summoned Voldemort. We don’t want to be here when he arrives.” 

“But that’s Barty Crouch, Jr.!” Harry exclaimed, pointing at the stunned Crouch. “Mr. Crouch’s son!” 

“Yes, Harry,” Lily said impatiently. “He was impersonating Moody. _Ferula_.” Bandages appeared out of nowhere and wrapped her right hand and wrist; the pain of it nearly blinded her for a second, even through her numbing charm, but after a moment she could handle it. 

She hurried over to the side of the room, where Tonks was still slumped invisibly against the wall. She dispelled the Disillusionment first, then let out a breath when she saw no visible damage. “ _Rennervate_ ,” she cast, and was glad to see Tonks’s eyelids twitch, and then slowly open. 

The pink-haired witch groaned. “What got me?” 

“I didn’t see,” Lily said, helping her to sit up. “We need to leave. _Emancipare_. Voldemort is coming.” 

Tonks flinched, and then clutched at her chest. Lily wasn’t sure if it was just in reaction to the name, or if the spell that had knocked her out had any lingering effects. They didn’t really have time to dwell on it. 

Harry was still staring down at Crouch. “I thought he was dead,” he said. “Didn’t he die in Azkaban?” 

“Not now, Harry,” Lily said. Once she had Tonks stable on her feet, she summoned Crouch’s invisibility cloak from the far corner and tossed it at the boy. “Just in case.” 

“How do you know You-Know-Who is coming?” Tonks asked. She still seemed a bit woozy, but her eyes scanned the room carefully, taking in the state of things. Spotting Moody’s blue eye sitting on a chair near Crouch, she moved forward to grab it. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up his wooden leg, too. 

“His Dark Mark,” Lily said, pointing down at Crouch. She wasn’t really sure how to answer the question more specifically -- she was going by a book she had read about Voldemort and the Death Eaters, which had spent a whole chapter discussing the Dark Mark. But that book certainly hadn’t been written yet, and she didn’t know whether the various enchantments in the tattoo were common knowledge at this point or not. She beckoned Harry to her side and held out her good elbow. “Take my arm, Harry,” she said, and then to Tonks, “Can you handle Crouch?” 

Before Tonks could answer, there was a faint sound from downstairs, and an icy wave of foreboding swept over the room. More sounds -- footsteps on the stairs. Voldemort was being dramatic. 

“Not anymore,” Tonks whispered frantically. Lily nodded. It took time to bring along an unconscious, unwilling passenger, and they no longer had time. 

“Just go,” she whispered back. 

Tonks spun, and disappeared with a _crack_. 

The footsteps on the stairs stopped abruptly, and a second later the door smashed open so violently it came off one of its hinges. Lily knew she had no option but to run as well -- even if she’d been of a mind to duel Voldemort, her right arm was incapacitated and her left had Harry hanging off of it. She squeezed her eyes shut, focused, and Disapparated. 

When they popped back into existence, Harry immediately let go of her arm and collapsed onto his hands and knees, heaving for breath. 

“First time, huh,” Lily muttered, then looked around to make sure they were in the right place. She had aimed for a quiet corner of Hogsmeade in one of the residential areas, a spot she had used as her personal get-away-fast Apparition destination for years, but it looked… wrong. The cottage they were hiding behind, for example, was painted the wrong color, off-white instead of the bright yellow she was used to. There was also a garden where she expected none, growing daisies and some kind of melon she didn’t recognize. 

Then she stopped, and rolled her eyes at herself. Things were different because it was thirty years ago. 

In that case, mission accomplished. 

She lifted her wand in her left hand and thought about the day she’d graduated from Auror training, and at the same time, concentrated hard on a message, letting her internal voice echo around in her head: _“I have him. We are safe and in Hogsmeade. We are returning to the castle now.”_ Then she fixed her mind on Albus Dumbledore, her intended recipient. Finally, she let it all go. 

A silvery hawk burst from her wand and flew away. Lily stood and enjoyed the peaceful sensation for a few seconds until it faded, the Patronus too distant to affect her. 

She would have sent the message to Tonks as well, but unfortunately she had no idea where the Auror was. Using the Patronus Charm as a messenger didn’t require pinpoint knowledge of a person’s location, but it did require something more specific than _somewhere in the country, who knows?_ Patronuses had some ability to track the target down, but they weren’t post owls. 

She turned back to her teenaged father, who at this point had recovered from his first time Apparating. “Come on,” she said. “We should get up to the castle. Put the cloak on and stay close.” 

Harry looked like he was about to object, so Lily shot him a look, trying to mimic the terrifying expression she’d received many times as a child from her own mother. Lily didn’t think she managed it nearly as well, but Harry blanched anyway, and pulled Moody’s invisibility cloak over his head. 

Feeling slightly dirty for manipulating Harry that way, Lily walked slowly and casually around the cottage and started off in the direction of Hogwarts. “You can ask questions, if you want,” she said, sort of as penance. “Just don’t get too loud.” 

Harry was silent for longer than she expected, but then he said, “Rita Skeeter says you don’t remember anything. Is that true?” 

“Who?” The name sounded vaguely familiar to Lily, like she’d read it before, but she couldn’t place it immediately. 

“Rita Skeeter,” Harry repeated. “She writes for the _Daily Prophet_. She’s awful. Her story this morning was about how you have no memory, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe her.” 

Lily considered this for a moment. “She’s not a Dumbledore plant, then?” she asked. 

Harry gave a kind of choking laugh. “I told you, she’s awful. She’s been writing nasty stories about me and my friends all year.” 

“Oh, right,” Lily said, remembering. “ _That_ Rita Skeeter.” She sighed, knowing she had to read the _Prophet_ for herself now. Rita Skeeter was well-known in her time for exaggerations, salacious gossip, and quotes out of context, which had enough of an audience to keep the woman busy, but she had largely been discredited as a serious reporter. If she was still being taken seriously in this time, Lily would have to keep an eye on what she was publishing, at least to avoid being blindsided. 

Still, it was curious that so far Rita Skeeter had managed to hit so close to the truth -- or rather, the “truth” that Dumbledore wanted to spread. Coincidence, or had the old Headmaster had a hand in things after all? 

“It’s mostly true,” she finally answered. “It’s, er, complicated.” 

“Then you don’t remember Dad?” Harry asked softly. 

Lily stopped. Of all the possible follow-up questions, she hadn’t expected that one. She probably should have. “No,” she said, “I have no memory of your father. I...” She shook her head, and made a decision. “That’s not quite right either. The truth is--” She glanced around. Hogsmeade was not secure. “You need to talk to Padfoot. He has another side of the story that shouldn’t be discussed in public.” 

If Harry talked to Sirius, Sirius would tell him the other explanation they had come up with, that Lily was from some kind of alternate universe. That was the best compromise Lily could think of. She agreed with Dumbledore that Harry could not be told who she really was -- but she also couldn’t keep going with the boy thinking she was his _actual mother_. It wasn’t fair to him… and she just didn’t think she could handle it. 

Harry was quiet after that. It was only the sound of his footsteps on the ground that assured her he was still following. 

It was a long walk back to Hogwarts.


	6. Don't Bother Looking Behind the Curtain

“Well, Mr. Potter,” Madam Pomfrey said, “I’m not sure what sort of misadventure you got yourself into since leaving my care this morning, but you seem to have made it through unharmed -- for once. You can make your own way back to your common room, and I sincerely hope not to see you again this term.” 

Harry winced a bit, but nodded. Then he looked over to where Lily sat on one of the beds, waiting patiently to be tended to. She’d insisted that Madam Pomfrey check Harry over first, since she didn’t know if Crouch had done anything to him before she and Tonks had found them. It seemed not, and Lily could relax. 

“What about her?” Harry was saying, gesturing towards her. “Will she be all right?” 

Madam Pomfrey clucked disapprovingly as she turned to face Lily. “Let’s have a look at you, then, Mrs. Potter,” she said. “Arm out, please.” 

Lily extended her right hand out towards the Hogwarts nurse, grimacing as even this small movement shot spikes of pain through her hand and wrist. Her numbing charm must have been wearing off. 

Madam Pomfrey peered at the conjured bandages for a second, then pulled out her wand and got rid of them with a quick wave. Lily caught just a glimpse of her bare hand, misshapen and all sorts of colors a hand should never be, and then steadfastly looked anywhere but there. She was therefore unprepared when Pomfrey poked at her hand a few times -- gingerly, but it felt like fire. 

“I believe we have two options here, Mrs. Potter,” the nurse said. “I could send you along to St. Mungo’s, where a Healer will be able to carefully reconstruct each of the bones in your hand. The process will take several hours, but as long as they can see to you without too much delay, you should be free to go before nightfall.” She paused, and glanced back at Harry, who was looking on anxiously. “The second option is one young Mr. Potter has some experience with, I’m sorry to tell you. I can remove the shattered bones from your hand, and you can re-grow them with Skele-Gro. It would be quite unpleasant, and you’ll have to spend the night--” 

“I’ll do that,” Lily interrupted. She had no intention of being sent off to St. Mungo’s. “As long as you can spare the bed.” This was a bit obnoxious, perhaps -- she and Harry were the only patients in the Hospital Wing. 

Madam Pomfrey sniffed and said nothing before bustling off to her potions store. 

Harry waffled near the door, obviously looking for some excuse to stick around. Lily took pity on him and threw him a lifeline. “You have experience with Skele-Gro? How did you get your bones broken this badly?” 

“I-- I didn’t,” he answered. “I mean-- a House-Elf broke my arm with a rogue bludger to try to force me to leave Hogwarts, but it would have been fine if my Defense Against the Dark Arts professor hadn’t accidentally vanished my bones.” He scratched the back of his head and muttered, “It sounds awful when I put it like that…” 

“When was this?” Lily tried to sound upset, like she was hearing the story for the first time. Her question was genuine, though -- her father’s stories had been colorful, but they were frequently told out of context. Stories like _“The time Dobby the House-Elf set that bludger at me”_ weren’t in any of the history books, and it could be hard sometimes to fit them into the overall chronology. 

“Er, second year,” Harry said. “The Gryffindor-Slytherin match.” Which meant early November. If she was remembering things correctly, her father’s second year had been the year of the Chamber of Secrets debacle, which she knew relatively little about -- according to the stories, it had ended with her father rescuing her mother from the Chamber by killing a basilisk with a sword, but she was sure at least some of that was embellished. 

Madam Pomfrey interrupted then by returning, bearing a tray with an empty goblet and two open vials, one of which was steaming. She set the tray on the bedside table, then pulled out her wand again. “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather go to St. Mungo’s?” she asked, giving Lily one last chance to back out. 

“I’m sure,” Lily said. 

Madam Pomfrey sighed in resignation, then focused intently, and a moment later Lily’s hand just… stopped hurting. She risked a look, and saw that at least it was shaped vaguely like a hand now -- if more like an inflated rubber glove than actual flesh and blood. At the same time, the rest of her arm was still sore, but only at the level of a moderate sprain, which was much more reasonable. 

“Drink this first,” the nurse said, handing her the vial that wasn’t steaming. “You won’t be able to use your arm until morning, but it’ll make sure things reconnect where they ought.” This sounded like a good deal to Lily, so she drank the potion quickly. It tasted sour. Meanwhile, Pomfrey was pouring the Skele-Gro into the goblet. “You have to drink all of it,” she warned as she handed it over, and so Lily drank that too, and it burned like acid going down her throat. 

“Thank you,” she gasped out, eyes watering. 

After collecting the empty goblet and vials, Madam Pomfrey shook her head and left again, muttering “Nasty business” under her breath. 

“I’m sorry you have to go through that because of me,” Harry said, fidgeting a bit where he stood. 

“Don’t start--” Lily said, and then broke into a cough. That Skele-Gro really was something. When she recovered, she tried again. “Don’t start with that. Crouch is the one who hurt me, and I am the one who let him. This isn’t remotely because of you.” 

She could tell from his face that he wasn’t going to accept that, but before he could argue any further, the door to the Hospital Wing swung open. Professor Dumbledore came striding in, his expression clouded over in deep thought, but he brightened when he saw Harry standing there. 

“Ah, Harry,” he said. “I’m very pleased to see you have made it through this latest trial unscathed.” Completely ignoring the wooden chairs already present in the room for visitors, he waved his wand and conjured a pair of very nice plush armchairs, one each in red and gold. He gestured to the red. “Please, have a seat.” 

“Thank you, Professor,” Harry said, somewhat cautiously. He did sit down, though. 

Dumbledore then traced a box-like shape in the air with his wand, muttering an incantation. Lily’s ears popped, and the air suddenly tasted very… sterile. 

“I think it would be best for this conversation to stay away from other interested ears,” the Headmaster offered in explanation. He smiled genially, then sat primly in the gold chair, and said, “If you would oblige me, I would very much like to hear what exactly transpired. Harry, if you would go first?” 

There was a moment of silence, and Harry glanced back at Lily with an incredulous look on his face. She had to fight back the sudden urge to giggle, because she _knew_ that look -- it was the look he would one day bear when dealing with particularly inane questions from Auror trainees. In a strange way, it was comforting. 

She shifted back on her hospital bed, leaning against the headboard. She was going to be there for a while, so she figured she might as well get comfortable. As she did, Harry began to talk. 

“I was in Divination,” he said. “About halfway through, Professor Moody showed up and asked to pull me out -- Professor Trelawney said I would regret leaving early, but we weren’t doing anything, really, and Professor Moody made it sound important, so I ignored her. He brought me to his office. It was all packed away -- I remember wondering if he was leaving early to go hunt down Voldemort or something.” He paused, realizing that this wasn’t too far from the truth. “A-Anyway, he distracted me with some question about exams, and then stunned me, I guess. When I woke, I was tied to a chair in a room I didn’t recognize, and Professor Moody seemed like he was just waiting for something.” He shook his head. “Except I guess none of that was actually Professor Moody. Right, sir?” 

“Harry,” Dumbledore said heavily, “you have never met the true Alastor Moody. The man you believed to be him was actually an impostor. His true identity was--” 

“Barty Crouch, Jr.,” Harry interrupted. “Er-- I recognized him from his trial.” Lily blinked at that -- Crouch’s trial was long before Harry was born. How did that make sense? But Dumbledore nodded. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“I don’t understand, Professor,” Harry said. “Mr. Crouch’s son died in Azkaban -- Sirius told me. How could he be running around now as Professor Moody?” 

“I think,” Dumbledore said, “we should put the exact mechanics of young Mr. Crouch’s survival aside for another time.” He glanced furtively at Lily, and she understood that he wanted a more detailed explanation from her before he started trying to relay any of those answers to others. “Can you tell me what happened next?” 

“Well-- we just waited for a while,” Harry said. “Then Professor Moody-- I mean, Crouch-- put on an invisibility cloak and left the room.” He pointed to the floor along the wall, where the invisibility cloak in question had been discarded. If Lily really were his mother, she thought, she probably should have scolded him for that. “And then I heard the sound of duelling, and…” He shrugged. “Mum can probably explain the rest better than I can.” He still said that word -- _Mum_ \-- with mild reverence. 

“Thank you, Harry,” Dumbledore said politely, and then he turned to Lily, eyebrows raised. She sighed, sat up a bit less casually on the bed, and cleared her throat. 

Drawing on her Auror training -- good for more than just clumsy break-ins! -- she gave Dumbledore a formal report of events from her perspective: Scanning the graveyard, searching the manor, dueling Crouch, losing to Crouch, breaking free and escaping before Voldemort came upon them, all the way up to Madam Pomfrey’s diagnosis and treatment. Then she gestured expansively with her left hand, because her right was still useless, and said, “And then you came in, and here we are.” 

“Indeed,” Dumbledore murmured. He stroked his beard for a few moments, then said, “If I might trouble you to revisit one point -- How, precisely, were you able to break free of your bonds and defeat your captor? He did not leave you with your wand, surely.” 

“Oh,” Lily said. She’d glossed over that part by force of habit. As the day’s events had shown, wandless casting was at its most useful when people didn’t know you could do it. But, she supposed, the cat was already out of the bag; Dumbledore obviously suspected, or he would not have asked quite so pointedly. And Harry had actually seen her do it. She would have a rather hard time of it, trying to pull the wool over their eyes. 

“I’d appreciate it if you not spread this around,” she said, looking primarily at Harry. He nodded, so she continued, “I don’t necessarily need a wand. Not for simple spells, anyway. Enough to get by.” 

Dumbledore smiled serenely like he’d known it all along, but Harry’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t need a wand?” he repeated. “Why not? What do you use instead?” 

She lifted her left hand and waggled her fingers. “It’s not as impressive as it sounds,” she told him. “Anyone could do it if they put in the work.” 

“How long did it take to learn?” he asked, his eyes bright. 

Lily hesitated, not wanting to disappoint him. “To be honest, Harry…” she said, “about ten years before I could use it at all reliably.” He immediately deflated, and she sighed. “I started working on it before I even got to Hogwarts -- the way lots of children do, probably, trying to control my accidental magic. I just never lost that ambition, I guess.” She cut off abruptly there, realizing that she was delving much too far into her own past, and not at all into the Lily Potter she was supposed to be. She had never heard anything about her grandmother learning wandless magic, and now she was giving Harry misleading impressions.

She really needed Sirius to have that talk with Harry. And speaking of, she turned to Dumbledore and said, “Can you get word to Sirius about all this? He’ll probably want to know what happened, and I know Harry wants to talk to him.” 

“I-- er, yeah, I do,” Harry said, perking back up. “Do you know where he is?” 

“I can contact Sirius,” Dumbledore said, “and I’m sure he will get in touch as soon as he is able.” He then made a show of checking his pocket watch before saying, “Harry, I believe it is time for you to make your way back to your common room. Your friends will be wondering where you are, I’m sure.” 

“I want to stay here with Mum,” Harry immediately protested. 

“Harry,” Lily said. “I will still be here in the morning. Go tell your friends you’re okay. Have dinner. Relax. Come see me again once I can use both of my hands.” 

Harry obviously wanted to argue more, but instead, he nodded jerkily. “All right, I-- I’ll see you later, then.” He stood still for another few seconds, then turned and hurried out of the Hospital Wing. 

Lily sighed. 

Instead of following Harry out the door, Dumbledore said, “We have one more matter to discuss, I’m afraid, before I can leave you to your recovery.” 

“And what would that be?” Lily asked. She couldn’t think of anything so pressing it merited a secured private conversation while she was in the Hospital Wing. Unless it had something to do with how she had ended up in the past? 

But instead, he said, “We need to discuss where Harry is going to stay over the summer.” 

“Okay,” Lily said slowly. “Why?” 

The old Headmaster leaned forward and gave her a piercing look. “Because he is going to want to stay with you, and you are going to have to convince him to return to his aunt and uncle.” 

Lily blinked. Then blinked again. Then said, “Run that by me again.” 

Dumbledore clasped his hands together, as if that would make him sound more reasonable. “Harry is going to want to stay with you for the summer,” he said, “but for his own protection he must return to his mother’s family -- his _true_ mother’s family.” He paused, then said, “How much do you know about the nature of the protections placed upon on Harry by Lily Potter’s sacrifice?”

“You mean for real,” Lily asked, “and not the story you cooked up to explain my miraculous resurrection?” She crossed her arms, or tried to, before remembering that her right arm was immobile and useless at the moment. Her hand was just starting to tingle with the effects of the Skele-Gro; she assumed the sensation would only get more and more painful as time went on. “I know that it saved him when he was a baby. Everything else is just speculation.” 

“Really,” Dumbledore said. He sounded almost disappointed. “Your father never gave you any more detail? You never tried to figure it out on your own?” 

Lily scowled. She didn’t appreciate feeling shamed into coming up with a better answer -- especially because it would probably work. “Well, hang on,” she said, and she did her best to remember. 

One thing was true -- the Harry Potter she’d been raised by did not like talking about his mother’s mysterious protection, but it still came up from time to time. It explained why Voldemort had insisted on using Harry’s blood in his ritual in the graveyard, for example. That had something to do with neutralizing it, so Voldemort could harm Harry again. After that -- most of the time he talked like that was the end of it. Once, though, when Lily was a young teen, her father had gotten drunk on Halloween and mentioned how the elder Lily’s sacrifice had saved his life three times. 

The first was obvious -- Halloween 1981. The second was less obvious, but Lily had eventually been able to determine the most likely culprit: the end of his first year, when Voldemort possessed the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and tried to kill him. But Lily had never figured out the third time to her satisfaction. And unless Harry had omitted something _hugely_ significant from his stories -- which she had to admit was possible -- she just didn’t see how it could fit any time _before_ the ritual in the graveyard. Which meant the protection had saved him one more time after that, which meant Voldemort hadn’t neutralized it after all. 

She didn’t know when that last time had been for her father -- but she suspected she had already seen it happen in this go-around. It was the only explanation she could think of for Harry surviving Voldemort’s Killing Curse in the graveyard. If that _wasn’t_ the explanation, then she really understood a lot less about magic than she thought. 

“It’s ongoing,” she concluded, speaking even as she worked through the implications. “Voldemort… Voldemort _still_ can’t kill him.” 

“That is my belief,” Dumbledore said, his eyes glittering. “And I daresay recent events have confirmed it.” 

“Right,” Lily agreed slowly. She ran her left hand through her hair, still processing this news. “But-- what does this have to do with where he stays for the summer?” 

“The protection must be renewed,” Dumbledore said simply. “It is a protection from mother to child -- so it will last only so long as he calls his mother’s blood home, and will end when he is no longer a child.” 

“His mother’s blood?” Lily repeated. 

“Lily’s sister Petunia,” Dumbledore said, “his aunt.” 

“And I don’t count?” Lily asked. “I’m related to her, too.” 

“For the purposes of the ancient magic we are discussing,” Dumbledore said carefully, “no, I don’t believe you ‘count.’ And quite frankly, it is not a risk I am willing to take. To put it very simply, Harry _must_ return to his aunt for the summer, or he will be rendered vulnerable to the forces of darkness.” 

“All right,” Lily accepted. She wasn’t about to argue with Albus Dumbledore about the subtle workings of an obscure magic ritual that was keeping her father from being murdered. “Does he have to stay there the whole time, though? I’m pretty sure he talked about visiting the Weasleys for a few weeks every summer.” 

“Let us estimate for now that he must stay home until his birthday,” Dumbledore said. “We can adjust in the future, as circumstances dictate.” His gaze went distant for a moment, as if he was busy calculating something, and then he said, “With that settled, I should probably speak to Minerva before dinner. I’m sure she has had an anxious afternoon.” He stood, and nodded resolutely. “Have a restful evening, Lily,” he said in farewell, and turned towards the doors. 

“Before you go,” Lily said quickly, “do you know if Tonks is okay?” 

“I have no reason to believe otherwise,” he said. “I’m sure Kingsley is looking after her.” Then, with a small smile, he left. 

Lily tilted her head back and thunked it against the wall. Her ears popped as Dumbledore’s privacy ward broke. 

There was a lot to take in. 

Everything about Harry’s protection from his mother, for instance -- if Dumbledore was right, then Harry was actually far safer than she ever could have imagined. On the other hand, the protection only applied to Voldemort himself, as far as she understood it; if Crouch had decided to murder Harry himself instead of capturing him as bait, he certainly would have succeeded. 

She wondered if her father had ever figured this out. 

She wondered if she should tell him now. 

And speaking of telling him -- Lily hadn’t forgotten that Dumbledore had dumped on _her_ the responsibility of telling Harry he had to go back to the Dursleys. How in Merlin’s name was she going to swing that? Even if he understood that he had to live with Petunia to recharge his mysterious protection, he believed she, Lily, was his mother! If he had to live with his mother’s blood, surely his _actual mother_ was a better choice than his mere aunt! 

She groaned, and slid down the bed until she was flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. A lot was riding on Sirius explaining things to Harry, but she didn’t know when that was going to happen, and she didn’t even know if Sirius was going to cooperate and tell Harry his alternate theory at all. She wished she could have a quick chat with him first before he talked to Harry, but frankly she didn’t see how that would be possible. So, she just had to hope. 

She tried to flex the fingers on her right hand, but nothing happened, of course. The hand did now feel a bit like there was a colony of ants living inside, so that was lovely. 

It did occur to her that it would be very difficult for Harry to stay with her for the summer regardless, because she didn’t actually have a place to stay herself. That was its own problem that maybe she could try to address in the next couple of days. She really didn’t want to live in the Leaky Cauldron all summer long. She just wasn't sure where else to go. Maybe she could follow Harry and stay with the Dursleys for a while. 

Her eyes widened, and then she started to laugh. Maybe she could! Maybe she could. And wouldn’t that just be something. 

* * *

Lily had just about dozed off into something resembling rest when the Hospital Wing door swung open again. A familiar head full of brown bushy hair poked through and, seeing that the coast was clear, one Hermione Granger stepped cautiously into the room. 

“Hermione,” Lily said blearily in greeting. “Good evening.” She rubbed her eyes, and glanced at a window; she couldn’t see much at her angle, but she knew at least it wasn’t night. “It is evening, right?” 

A curious look flashed across the young girl’s face for just a second, and then was gone. “It’s after dinner,” Hermione said, moving to stand beside the bed. “How are you doing, Mrs. Potter?” 

“At the moment, like my hand is full of splinters,” Lily said, “but I’ll be fine by morning. More importantly, please call me Lily.” It was a little awkward with just one functional arm, but she sat up and turned to face her teenaged aunt. 

Hermione hesitated, and there was a moment where the two of them just looked at each other. Lily was surprised to see Hermione nervous -- both because she didn’t know what there was to be nervous about, but also because, well, this was _Hermione_. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the formidable witch at anything less than full confidence. 

On the other hand, this Hermione was fifteen, and Lily could remember being fifteen. 

“What can I do for you, Hermione?” she said, prodding gently. 

“I was… I was hoping you would be willing to answer a few questions,” Hermione said. 

“I assume you’ve talked to Harry recently?” Realizing she was hungry, Lily looked over at the nightstand and saw that Madam Pomfrey had not forgotten her; there was a tray with a covered bowl, a spoon, and a goblet full of water waiting there for her. The bowl was under a warming charm, she knew, to keep the soup inside hot. 

“Yes,” Hermione said. “I know about… what happened today.” 

Very carefully -- because she was using her off hand and because she didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of Aunt Hermione of all people -- Lily levitated the tray from the nightstand to her lap. She lifted the cover from the bowl and breathed in. “Cream of mushroom,” she commented out loud. “Not my favorite, but all right.” Then she glanced back at Hermione. “What do you want to know?” she asked, and then tried her first spoonful of the soup. It was okay -- not too hot to eat quickly, which was good, because she had no intention of savoring it. 

Finally, Hermione seemed to shake off whatever malaise was affecting her. She pulled over the closest chair -- Dumbledore’s armchairs were long gone -- and sat, grabbing a parchment and quill from her bag and leaning forward eagerly. “Harry said you told him that Rita Skeeter was correct about your amnesia,” she said. “But just to confirm, you have no memory of any events or experiences prior to your… reappearance… two days ago?” 

“That’s right,” Lily said carefully. She would have to watch herself and make sure not to say something she shouldn’t -- if anyone could catch her out on an inconsistency, it would be Hermione. 

“From what Harry told me, though,” Hermione continued, “you didn’t forget _procedural_ knowledge -- you remember your spells, for example, and how to navigate through Hogsmeade.” 

“I… hadn’t given that much thought,” Lily said. Of course she hadn’t; she didn’t really have amnesia. “Is that unusual?” 

The bushy-haired girl chewed on her lower lip for a second. “I’m not sure. In Muggle stories, people with amnesia still know how to read and write. Of course, in those same stories, people with amnesia usually don’t remember their own name -- was that true for you? Did you _know_ your name was Lily, or did Professor Dumbledore have to tell you that?” 

“Yes,” Lily said, but before she even finished answering she wondered if she should lie. But no -- she had already talked to people like Cornelius Fudge and Amelia Bones and hadn’t displayed any sense of forgetting her own identity. In fact, she had gone about correcting everyone who called her Mrs. Potter. Maybe it might have made more sense to pretend she had forgotten her own name, but it was too late for that now. So, she clarified for Hermione, “I remembered my name.” 

Hermione nodded and scribbled some things down on her parchment. Lily took the opportunity to scoop up the last of her soup. Then, as she was moving the tray back to the nightstand, Hermione asked, “How is Harry able to survive the Killing Curse?” 

She set the tray down a bit harder than intended, and the spoon rattled in the empty bowl. 

“You’ve asked me that before,” she answered. 

“It’s rather important, I think,” Hermione said, and her tone instantly made Lily feel guilty -- she was already faced away, so other than a small difference in pitch, that _was_ her Aunt Hermione, and she was a child being scolded. “If you figured out a way to block one of the Unforgivable Curses -- especially _that_ one -- don’t you think people should know?” Hermione paused, maybe to see if Lily would offer anything yet, then continued with a pleading, “Especially with V-Voldemort back, anything to help us protect ourselves--” 

“I can’t help you,” Lily interrupted, turning back to face the teenaged witch. “At least-- not how you’re hoping.” She took a deep breath. “I was just talking to Dumbledore about this, or sort of, anyway. I think I understand now how it works. But I have absolutely no idea how it _happened._ ” 

“It?” Hermione pressed. 

“The magic protecting Harry,” Lily said, and then she shook her head. “Hang on a moment.” She grabbed her wand again. “ _Muffliato_ ,” she cast, then explained, “A bit of privacy.” 

At this, Hermione stiffened, her eyes wide. “I’ve been an idiot,” she breathed. She stood, and began to look carefully around the room. 

“Hermione?” Lily said. “It’s just a precaution. There’s no one else here. Even Madam Pomfrey’s door is closed.” 

“If there were,” Hermione said carefully as she continued her search, “would they hear what we’re saying?” 

“It would sound like indistinct buzzing to them,” Lily said. She’d been on the outside of _Muffliato_ often enough in her life to be well familiar with it. 

“Okay,” Hermione said. Then she relaxed, apparently satisfied that they were alone. “Sorry,” she said, “I just had to double-check something.” 

“Double-check what?” Lily asked, faintly mystified. 

“Let’s just say that Rita Skeeter has a way of getting into places she shouldn’t,” Hermione said, “and I wanted to be sure the room wasn’t _bugged_.” She raised her eyebrows, and Lily had the oddest sensation that she was being challenged. Unfortunately, she also had no idea what Hermione was talking about. 

“I hardly think a _Daily Prophet_ reporter would be hiding under a hospital bed,” she said awkwardly, knowing that she was missing something. 

“Well, never mind,” Hermione said, and she sat back down and grabbed her parchment from the floor, where it had fallen. She took a second to review her notes, then said, “You were explaining how Harry is protected from the Killing Curse.” 

“I really wasn’t,” Lily said. “I was saying that I don’t know.” 

“We agreed earlier,” Hermione reminded her, “that despite your amnesia, you retain your full knowledge of magic, including the effects of obscure spells and how to cast them. You demonstrated that just a moment ago, in fact. It stands to reason that you should remember what you did to protect Harry.” 

“And yet I don’t,” Lily said, starting to get exasperated. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t remember anything about that night. Everything I know, I know from Dumbledore. Why don’t you ask him?” 

Hermione looked scandalized. “I can’t just-- _ask_ \-- Professor Dumbledore!” 

It was totally inappropriate, she knew, but Lily burst out laughing. There was just something highly entertaining about Hermione Granger looking personally affronted at the idea of approaching the Headmaster out of turn. “All right, all right,” she said once she was able to contain herself. And then, figuring she owed the girl something for laughing at her, she offered, “I’ll give you a summary of what we discussed, but that’s really the best I can do.” 

Hermione still looked rather put out, but she took up her parchment and quill again and just looked at Lily expectantly. 

“All right,” Lily said one last time, as she organized her thoughts. “Basically, as I understand it-- and I want to emphasize first that I could be _wrong_ \-- basically, some ancient and powerful magic was invoked the night Voldemort tried to kill Harry. This ancient and powerful magic protected Harry that night, and continues to protect him, but only as long as certain conditions are met.” She tugged at her hair. “How did Dumbledore put it? ‘A protection from mother to child’-- so the protection lasts only as long as he continues to live with his mother’s blood, that is to say, his Aunt Petunia.” Belatedly, she remembered to add, “My sister.” 

Hermione was frowning deeply even as she took notes. “That’s why he had to stay with his horrid relatives over the summer?” 

“That’s what Dumbledore says,” Lily confirmed. “And regardless, it’ll end when he comes of age.” 

“But so long as he has it,” Hermione said, “he’s protected from the Killing Curse?” 

“He’s protected from Voldemort.” Lily gave a lopsided shrug, her right arm still mostly immobile. “I understand that someone else could still kill him.” 

Hermione scribbled a few last notes, then looked up. “Anything else?” 

“That’s all Dumbledore told me,” Lily said. 

Crisply rolling up the parchment, Hermione stashed it and the quill back into her bag. Then she folded her hands in her lap and just sat there for a while, gazing at Lily. 

At first Lily just stared back, but then she started to feel very uncomfortable. “What?” she said. 

“You’re not much like I imagined,” Hermione commented, her voice light, but her chocolate-colored eyes were piercing. Immediately Lily felt the back of her neck prickle -- but there was no way Hermione had actually figured anything out, surely? Goblins were one thing, and Ollivander was another, but Hermione Granger realizing the truth would be a disaster of rather epic proportion -- 

No, no, she was panicking over nothing. Even if Hermione was suspicious, there was no reason for the girl to come anywhere close to the right conclusion. And maybe she wasn’t suspicious at all -- maybe it was just an observation, not an _accusation_ \-- 

She had been quiet for too long, she realized. “I am who I am,” she said, fighting back a nervous chuckle. “I hope that’s not too disappointing.” 

Hermione hummed noncommittally, then hefted her bag and stood up. “I need to get back,” she said. “I told the boys I was grabbing a book from the library.” 

Considering end-of-year exams were already over, only Hermione could have gotten away with that, Lily knew. “Have a good evening,” she said. 

“Good evening,” Hermione returned politely, and then she left. 

Lily let out a long, slow breath as she settled back down flat on the bed. 

So _that_ was Hermione Granger at fifteen. 

What next, she wondered. Was Ron going to sneak in after curfew just to fill out the set? Probably not; she couldn’t imagine him doing that without Harry, and she hoped Harry understood to let her rest until morning. Besides, what would Ron even have to ask her about? 

No, she thought, she would have a nice, restful, and interruption-free night in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing. 

* * *

That was not to be. 

Only a few minutes after Hermione’s departure, well before Lily could hope to drift back off to sleep, the Hospital Wing received another visitor. It was a young Gryffindor girl with curly black hair, first or second year by appearances, and she was holding both hands cupped over her nose. She was apparently the victim of a poorly cast Engorgement Charm; accident or bullying, she refused to say. Either way, Madam Pomfrey fixed her nose in about a second and sent her on her way. 

The trouble was… the girl had spent most of her visit sneaking glances over at the bed where Lily was trying desperately not to draw attention to herself. Unfortunately, even if her photo hadn’t been prominent in the _Daily Prophet_ recently, she was still an adult witch in a school ward, and that was unusual enough by itself. 

When that young Gryffindor left, Lily knew, the Hogwarts rumor mill would be off and running in no time at all. 

It took only fifteen minutes before the next visitor, or rather group of visitors, as three girls and two boys came in together. They were all Gryffindors, and only one out of the lot of them even had anything wrong -- one of the girls had burns on her hand from an exploding potion. The rest of them were there to escort her through the halls, they told Madam Pomfrey very seriously, because it was getting close to curfew for the younger students. 

For her part, Lily did her best to pretend to sleep through these disturbances. She had no intention of actually engaging with any of these children come to gawk. 

It was about half an hour after that group left that the first non-Gryffindors showed up, a boy and a girl, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff respectively. They were still there when another Ravenclaw boy popped in. It was about that point that Madam Pomfrey pulled the privacy curtains around Lily’s bed, saving her from curious eyes. 

That didn’t stop them from coming -- she heard a regular flow of students visiting the Hospital Wing for blatantly trivial impairments, right up to curfew -- but at least she didn’t feel like an exhibit in a zoo. And if nothing else, listening to all the creative explanations distracted her from the splintery pain in her hand, which was the worst it had been since drinking the potion. Hopefully, it would abate soon, and then, _then_ , she could have her nice, restful, interruption-free night. 

* * *

One more visitor. 

Lily snapped awake to the sound of the doors. She didn’t know what time it was, but it was well after curfew; Madam Pomfrey had long since been by to give her a final check-up before retiring for the night. The sharp pain in her hand had been replaced by a dull, pervasive ache, and even that would fade by morning. The Skele-Gro had done its job. 

Whoever had entered the Hospital Wing was moving quietly, creeping across the floor to her bed. The curtains were still drawn around her, so all she had were her ears to go by, but that was plenty -- the visitor wasn’t nearly stealthy enough to hide the sound of their breathing and footsteps. Lily could tell where they were, and by their quality decided that this was another student, and not, say, Barty Crouch, Jr. snuck into Hogwarts to murder her. 

Even so, Lily began to focus, ready to fight back if fighting was warranted. 

The curtains rustled, then parted to admit… nothing. 

Or rather, an invisible someone. 

A moment later, an invisibility cloak fell to the ground, revealing a boy with messy black hair and glasses. Lily allowed herself to relax, and closed her eyes. She didn’t think he had seen them open. 

Harry didn’t say anything -- he just stood there for a bit. Then she felt his hand take hers. She could feel him trembling. 

Should she ‘wake’? Could she help him? Or did he need his privacy, this moment alone to just _be_ there with her with no judgment or prying eyes? 

Abruptly, he let go, but only for long enough to grab the visitor’s chair from against the wall. The chair legs scraped loudly against the floor, and she wondered if Madam Pomfrey would wake and discover them, but Harry seemed unconcerned. He sat, and took her hand again, this time with both of his. 

She decided to leave him be. If he’d come in wanting to talk to her, he would have tried to wake her up. 

It was kind of nice, she had to admit, lying there with him holding her hand. It made her feel like a little girl again, with her father at her bedside, keeping her safe at night. It made her feel warm. 

Yes -- this was nice. 

* * *

“Up you get,” Madam Pomfrey said, her voice jostling Lily awake. “I need to take a look at that arm of yours.” 

Reluctantly, Lily opened her eyes and glanced about. Harry was gone, of course; she hadn’t really expected him to sit there all night. The privacy curtain was gone, too. Just as well; there was no one else around, either. It was probably too early in the morning for gawkers. 

“Arm,” Madam Pomfrey reminded her impatiently. Maybe she wasn’t a morning person. At least it seemed like Lily could move her right arm again -- and her hand didn’t hurt at all anymore. She wiggled her fingers to test them out, then gave Pomfrey her arm to examine. 

The nurse placed the tip of her wand on Lily’s palm and muttered an incantation under her breath. A strong tingle flowed from her wrist to her fingertips. Apparently this was the desired outcome, because Madam Pomfrey gave a sharp nod. 

“That’s you settled, then,” she said. 

Lily shook her hand to clear the last of the tingles. “Thank you,” she said. 

“Normally,” Pomfrey said, “at this point I would release you to breakfast in the Great Hall. In your case, however…” 

“I guess that might be awkward, yeah,” Lily said. It wasn’t exactly typical for random adults to wander in and eat with the students. She couldn’t say for sure that it had definitely never happened during her seven years at Hogwarts, but she certainly couldn’t remember any examples. “Don’t worry, I’ll scrounge something up somewhere.” Like the kitchens -- though it was debatable whether they would serve her either, for the same reason. 

But Madam Pomfrey shook her head, pursing her lips with disapproval. “My meaning was, Mr. Potter is fetching a meal for you this very moment. He requested that the two of you be allowed to eat here, to avoid the crowds in the Great Hall.” She sniffed. “Given the unusual circumstances, I will allow it -- this once.” 

“Harry’s… bringing breakfast?” That was actually very convenient -- except from the way Madam Pomfrey said it, it sounded like Harry had already been by. Had he gotten any sleep at all? “How long ago did he leave?” 

“About fifteen minutes ago,” Madam Pomfrey told her. “Assuming he is keeping to a respectable pace in the halls, it should be a few more minutes before--” 

The doors swung open, and Harry entered, carrying a basket and looking slightly winded. Madam Pomfrey just huffed and retreated to her office. 

“Harry, good morning,” Lily said. Suddenly self-conscious, she flattened her hair a bit, hoping it didn’t look too wild after just waking up. Not that Harry could ever judge anyone for unkempt hair… 

“Good morning, Mum,” he returned, and lifted the basket with a small grin. “Fancy a bit of breakfast?” 

“What a pleasant surprise,” Lily said, which was of course a lie, but who had to know? “Could you just give me a second?” With that, she slid out of bed and stood on her own two feet for the first time since arriving at the Hospital Wing the previous afternoon. Reaching up towards the ceiling, she stretched, working the kinks out of her back. 

“Your hand’s okay, then?” Harry asked as he took advantage of the vacated bed to start laying out food. 

“Good as new,” Lily confirmed, and then accepted that this wasn’t really the time or place for a more comprehensive limbering routine. She turned to look at just what it was that Harry had brought to eat. “Bacon and scones?” she said. “I hope you eat better than that most mornings.” 

Harry just shrugged. “It’s what the House-Elves gave me,” he said. 

Lily suspected that he could have requested something else from them if he’d really wanted, but she wasn’t going to put up a fuss. Maybe the real Lily Potter would have. She didn’t even know if the real Lily Potter liked bacon or scones. “Well, thank you regardless,” she said, and grabbed a strip of bacon to start with. 

She had to admit, there was just something special about Hogwarts food. Even with an odd, makeshift breakfast like this, using a hospital bed as a table, the taste of it brought her back to her own school days. It was nice. 

Harry was halfway through his second scone before he spoke again. “Where are you going after this?” he asked. 

“That’s a good question,” Lily admitted. She considered as she licked her fingers clean, then said, “I should probably give Dumbledore a visit before I go anywhere. After that… I was kind of in the middle of shopping, yesterday, when I had to drop everything to rescue you.” 

Harry looked down and grimaced. “I’m sorry,” he said. 

“I told you, none of that,” Lily told him. “And at least Crouch was kind enough to wait until I had my wand before causing trouble.” She waved the wand in question, packing the remnants of breakfast back into the basket and cleaning up the bed. She didn’t want to give Madam Pomfrey even more reason to be cross with her. 

“What else were you shopping for?” Harry asked. 

“Pretty much everything,” Lily said. “It’s not like I had my trunk with me when I appeared in the graveyard.” 

Harry turned to face her more directly and shifted his weight awkwardly. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and took a deep breath. She had to fight back a giggle at the way he was obviously building up the nerve to say something -- she had a suspicion he would not appreciate it. 

“Mum,” he said eventually, “where are you going to live?” 

Right to the heart of the matter, then. “Actually, I need to talk to you about that,” Lily said. “You see, I kind of have this plan--” 

She was interrupted by the Hospital Wing doors slamming open. Hermione burst through, a newspaper clutched in her hand and a blazing look on her face. “Harry!” she cried. “Good, you’re still here! You haven’t seen today’s _Prophet_ , have you?” 

“Er, no, Hermione,” Harry answered, even as Madam Pomfrey hurried out of her office in response to the noise. 

“Here!” Hermione said, and she thrust the paper forward at Harry. It took him a moment to unfold it and figure out what he was supposed to be looking at -- but when he did, his jaw dropped. 

“What is it?” Lily asked, but Harry didn’t even seem to hear her. She moved around to read over his shoulder. When she saw the headline, she allowed herself a small, satisfied smirk. 

The paper read, **_BONES ORDERS RETRIAL FOR FUGITIVE BLACK!_**


	7. A Nudge in the Right Direction

Lily didn’t even make it to Dumbledore’s office, because halfway from the Hospital Wing to the closest stairs, she ran into a large and shaggy black dog going the other way.

She stopped, and the dog stopped, and it took her a second or two to realize this must be Sirius.

“What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, then shook her head. It wasn’t actually safe to talk. The hallways were empty -- the first class of the day was now in session -- but even an empty hallway was never truly private at Hogwarts. Too many nosy portraits.

So she looked around, and tried to remember what secret passageways and hideaways were nearby. She had never owned the infamous Marauder’s Map, not even after James and Al had both graduated, so she’d always had to rely on the fruits of her own exploration. She knew there were a lot of secrets in the castle she had never found -- but the ones she had, she thought she remembered them pretty well.

In this case, there was a tapestry around the corner hanging in front of a small alcove. That wasn’t the secret. The secret was that if you pulled on one of the sconces in the alcove, the back wall opened up into a tunnel that led to near the entrance to the dungeons. And unlike the hallways of Hogwarts, the secret tunnels could usually be considered private -- as long as nobody else who knew the secret happened to pass through at the same time.

“Follow me,” she said, and she led dog-Sirius around the corner and into the tunnel. Almost immediately, the moment the entrance slid shut behind them, he reverted back to human form.

“Where’s Harry?” the man demanded. “Dumbledore said he’d been kidnapped, and then-- you rescued him?”

“Hello, Sirius,” Lily said. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the tunnel wall. “Yes, Harry was taken from the castle by a Death Eater. Yes, we rescued him. He’s unharmed. And now he’s in History of Magic.”

“History of--” Sirius let out a long breath and slumped as the tension bled out of him. It wasn’t very bright in the tunnel, but Lily noticed now just how haggard he looked. His eyes were dark from lack of sleep, and from the state of his chin, he’d been neglecting his shaving. And she didn’t need a dog’s nose to notice that wasn’t the only thing he’d been neglecting.

“Were you really going to barge in on Harry like that?” she asked.

He frowned at her, confused for a second, before realizing what she was on about. After, he glowered. “I’ve been busy,” he said. “Taking care of Remus.”

Lily paused. “Right,” she said. “How is he doing?”

“He’s not dead,” Sirius said shortly, and he reached up to scratch at his hair. “And he’s not going to die. But he’s bedridden for a couple of weeks at least.”

“I’m glad to hear he’ll be okay,” she told him, but Sirius just grunted in response.

She decided to just change the subject. “Have you seen the _Prophet_ this morning?” she asked.

This seemed to throw him off his mood a bit, just as she’d hoped. “The paper?” he said. “No. Why? What are they saying this time?”

“Madam Bones is giving you a trial,” Lily said.

Sirius gaped at her, the silence stretching on for several long seconds before he shook his head. “No, she isn’t.”

“She is,” Lily insisted. “It’s on the front page and everything.”

“It’s just a ruse,” Sirius said, “trying to get me to turn myself in. You don’t know this Ministry like I do. Giving me a trial would make Fudge look weak, and he would never allow it.”

“I don’t think the Director of Magical Law Enforcement needs the Minister’s permission just to hold a trial,” Lily said.

“Then he’ll sabotage it,” Sirius said. “Whatever it takes. But I still say it’s just a trap. Why would Bones randomly hold a trial now, after a year of hunting me down?”

“I might have had something to do with that,” Lily admitted. “I had a chat with Madam Bones-- explained some of what really happened, that night.”

“You-- what?” Sirius stepped closer, peering at her face in the dim light, and Lily instinctively tensed. She had to force herself not to break her relaxed pose, leaning against the wall. “What did you say about it? You weren’t really there.”

Lily hadn’t considered that wrinkle -- the fact that Sirius’s theory of an alternate Lily didn’t really give her any leeway in ‘remembering’ things the way her more public cover story did. And yet it was the one she had wanted him to convey to Harry. She… would have to give that more thought.

“The big thing,” she said cautiously, “is that I told them you weren’t the Secret-Keeper. That did most of the heavy lifting.”

“And they believed you?” Sirius asked, his expression intense and still far too close.

“Dumbledore was there to tell them I would know,” she said. “He told them I cast the Fidelius in the first place.” She paused for a moment, then asked, “Is that true, by the way?”

He stared down at her for a few seconds, then pushed off from the wall and turned partly away. “It’s true that Lily cast the Fidelius,” he said stiffly. “She was the best of us at Charms.”

“Not Dumbledore?”

Sirius let out a low, unamused laugh. “Don’t you see? We wanted our little swap as secret as possible. Only four people in the world knew that Peter was the Secret-Keeper-- James, Lily, me, and the rat himself. Having Dumbledore cast the spell would mean telling him too, but there was a spy in the Order-- we _knew_ that-- but we didn’t know who it was. We thought telling even Dumbledore was too great a risk. We didn’t even tell _Remus_.” He rubbed his face with a heavy hand. “Merlin, we were fools.”

Lily stayed quiet, letting him have his moment. Then, when she decided he’d had long enough, she said, “Anyway, your trial is in late July. They haven’t set an exact date yet. I don’t know what you think Fudge might do; the case seems pretty conclusive to me.”

He glanced back over at her. “Don’t underestimate him,” he said. “And this is personal for him. He was on the scene when I was arrested, you know.”

Lily had not known that, but she also wasn’t sure how much it mattered. And maybe he saw that in her face, because he just sighed.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “In the castle. I should get out before someone else spots me.”

That was true enough, but… “Harry was hoping to talk to you,” she told him. “I’m sure you could find a place to hide out until he gets out of class.”

He just shook his head. “I could, but I shouldn’t,” he said. “I’ll send him a letter and get in touch the normal way. It’s the last week of term, anyway-- I’ll see him soon enough.”

Lily wondered briefly what ‘the normal way’ really entailed -- but before she could ask, she heard a faint sound from the distant end of the tunnel. Even as she turned to look, Sirius vanished from beside her, replaced by the large black dog that was his Animagus form. She couldn’t fault his caution, but it did leave her in a bit of an awkward position, standing alone in the tunnel with a dog.

She pulled out her wand, cast “ _Lumos,_ ” and pointed it down the tunnel like a torch. The figures at the other end were too distant to make out faces, but she was able to tell that there were two of them. They also seemed unfazed by the light now shining in their eyes. One of them gave a cheery wave.

They had red hair, she saw as they walked closer. Matching stocky builds. Identical grins. She knew who they were.

Yet -- this was the first time she had ever seen her Uncle Fred in person, and she couldn’t tell which of the two of them he was.

“Well, now, isn’t this interesting,” the twin on the right said as the two of them came to a stop, planting themselves about a dozen feet out from Lily and Sirius. “Here we are, out on a nice morning stroll--”

“--and what do we find but Harry Potter’s dead mum--”

“--miraculously _un_ dead, that is to say--”

“--hanging out in one of Hogwarts’ secret tunnels--”

“--with a _dog_.”

Lily already felt disoriented. She also had absolutely no idea if the Weasleys in general knew about Sirius at this point. Ron did, of course, but that didn’t mean anything as far as Fred and George were concerned.

She decided to play it safe for the time being -- and to drive the conversation away from tricky subjects.

“A morning stroll in the dungeons?” she asked. “While you should be in class?”

The twin on the left waved his hand dismissively. “Nah, we’re clear there. Should’ve had Defense Against the Dark Arts, but...”

“Professor Moody decided he had better things to do,” the twin on the right finished.

“Oh?” Lily said carefully. She hadn’t really thought about it until that moment, but now she was curious what the Hogwarts rumor mill was saying about the day before. Had it connected fake-Moody’s disappearance to her stay in the Hospital Wing?

If it had, Fred or George didn’t let on. “He suddenly left the castle yesterday,” he said. This was the twin on the left. Lily decided abruptly that he was Fred, if just to make her life simpler. “Packed up his office and everything.”

“Didn’t finish grading his exams, though,” the other one -- George -- added with a grin. “I told McGonagall we should all get full marks, but--” He leaned in and held a hand to his mouth, as if imparting some scandalous secret. “--I don’t think she’ll listen.”

“I imagine not,” Lily said. She resisted the urge to glance down at Sirius, who was doing a remarkable job of holding still and not drawing any attention to himself. “Where do you think he went?”

“Professor Moody?” The twins glanced at each other and did a synchronized shrug. “You-Know-Who is back, isn’t he?” George said. “He probably felt he could do more good out there than here.”

“So you really believe he’s back?” Lily asked, thinking of Fudge and her knowledge of the Ministry’s disinformation campaign the first time around. But then both twins gave her weird looks, and she realized belatedly how odd that question must have sounded, coming from her.

Before they could call her on it, though, there was another sound from down the tunnel -- a bit of a crash, and then a loud but distant shout: “You _wankers! "_

Fred and George grinned widely at each other. “He escaped a lot faster than I thought!” Fred said to George.

“We’ll have to try it with the murtlap venom next time,” George said to Fred. Then they both turned back to Lily. “It was lovely to meet you, Mrs. Potter--”

“--but we really must be gone.”

They gave her identical, grandiose bows from the waist, then slipped past her and hit the switch on the wall that opened the passage back out into the alcove behind the tapestry.

Lily looked down at Sirius, meeting his doggy gaze for a few seconds. She jerked her head in the direction of the twins, asking if he wanted to follow them out; he let out a low _woomf_ in response. Deciding that meant yes, she turned and hurried out before Fred or George could close them back in with the angry victim who, she could hear, was currently running at full tilt down the tunnel.

Emerging back into the hallway, she just managed to catch a glimpse of two redheads disappearing around a corner. The twins were certainly wasting no time. Part of her wanted to follow them, but they were going the wrong way -- and she did have to get to Dumbledore at some point.

She did take the time to push on the sconce that triggered the secret passage. The angry prank victim barreling through let out a cry of surprise as the wall closed off in front of him. Lily hoped he was able to stop himself before he crashed; she didn’t really want to hurt him, just slow him down as she made her escape. She set off in the direction of the stairs, sparing just a quick glance down to make sure Sirius was still with her.

The dog was tight on her heels as she jogged up the steps to the second floor. She could hear the sound of his paws on the stairs as he scrabbled up behind her. And yet, when she was halfway down the main second-floor corridor, she suddenly realized that he was gone.

She paused, and turned to look for him. Some of the portraits on the walls eyed her curiously, but they otherwise seemed content to mind their own business. The muffled sound of a lecture filtered out of a classroom down the way; she didn’t recognize the professor’s voice offhand. And a certain big black dog had vanished.

“Sirius?” she called out, as loudly as she dared. There was no response.

Curious despite herself, she moved back towards the stairs, eyeing the walls. Was there another secret passageway here that she didn’t know about? But if so, she wasn’t going to find it now. And if Sirius had ducked away through such a passage, he could pop back out nearly anywhere in the castle. She would never find him.

The students in the classroom down the way chanted something in unison, perhaps a new incantation they were learning. Exams were over and done, but some professors liked to use the last week to give a preview of the next year’s magic.

Lily turned again, and continued down the hall toward the Headmaster’s Office. Sirius could take care of himself, and she had her own business to take care of.

And yet -- when she found herself once again in front of the gargoyle, she realized she had still never actually been given the password.

“For Merlin’s sake,” she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Is there a way I can just… knock? Is that a thing you can do?” She reached out as if to rap her knuckles against the gargoyle’s forehead, but something about its impassive gaze stayed her hand. If there was any sort of intelligence in there, she decided, she didn’t want to get on its bad side.

What other options did she have? Other than camping out in the hallway to wait for Dumbledore to come down, she could really only think of one: Find McGonagall and ask for help. As Assistant Headmistress, the Transfiguration professor had the authority to give out the password at her own discretion, and given the way she’d acted when they’d met in the office the day before, McGonagall could probably be talked into doing a favor for who she thought was Lily Potter, her former student.

But even as Lily turned away to track down her new quarry, the gargoyle statue began to rumble. She turned back immediately, ready to step onto the spiral staircase beyond -- but the gargoyle did not move. In fact, it stopped rumbling entirely.

After a few seconds of waiting, she decided it had been a fluke. Once again she turned to go -- and once again the gargoyle began to rumble.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Held it. Breathed out. She turned back to the gargoyle. The rumbling stopped. She opened her eyes. It still wasn’t open.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” she began, but at that moment the gargoyle finally slid gracefully to the side, revealing the staircase and, stepping out, Severus Snape, Potions master.

“Potter,” he said flatly, and before she could even respond in kind, he had turned and was was well on his way to the corner, his cloak billowing out behind him.

She watched him, for a moment. Other than Dumbledore, and obviously herself, Snape was the only person in the world who knew her true identity. Knowing what she did from her father’s stories, she wasn’t too worried that he would spill the beans to Voldemort -- but even just considering the possibility sent a shiver down her spine.

For now, though, he had literally opened a door for her, and she was not going to waste it. She hurried past the gargoyle and ascended the staircase, knocked firmly on the door, and entered at the sound of Dumbledore’s voice.

The Headmaster was seated behind his desk, looking entirely unsurprised that she had come to visit. “Ah, Lily, good morning,” he said, with a hint of good cheer.

Lily spotted a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ on his desk, off to the side. “You’ve read about Sirius’s trial, I assume,” she said as she found a chair and sat down.

“Indeed,” Dumbledore said with a small twinkle in his eye. “I have also, at present, received no fewer than three owls from Minister Fudge on the matter.”

“Sirius thinks the Minister is going to try to sabotage the trial,” Lily reported. “Do you think that’s likely?”

The old wizard leaned back slightly, and folded his hands. “I think it would be wise to keep all eyes open,” he said. “Cornelius has already made clear his intent to preside over the trial himself, which should grant him considerable leeway in ensuring the outcome is one acceptable to him.”

“But wasn’t he involved in the events in question?” Lily asked. “Shouldn’t that bar him from presiding over the trial?” But even as she asked, she knew the answer -- because she knew that the laws to prevent that kind of conflict of interest would not go on the books in Wizarding Britain until a series of legal reforms passed during her own Hogwarts years, now decades in the future.

Dumbledore seemed to read in her expression that no answer was necessary, because he just smiled, and instead said, “You did not visit me today to discuss legal minutia. What can I help you with? I see your arm is fully recovered.”

“Oh, yes,” Lily said, waving it about a bit to demonstrate. “And, I actually wanted to talk to you about the summer.” She took a deep breath, then barrelled forward: “Since you say Harry has to go live with the Dursleys for a while, and since I don’t have anywhere else to stay either, I thought maybe I could go with him, and stay with the Dursleys as well.”

Dumbledore was still for a very long moment. It was long enough that Lily’s nerves began to fray at the ends. She didn’t know how or why just yet, but it was obvious that the Headmaster did _not_ like this plan. Was it really that terrible? What had she missed?

Then Dumbledore seemed to collect himself, and when he spoke, his tone was casual and friendly. “When you meet the Dursleys,” he said, “I assume it would be as Lily Potter née Evans, Harry’s mother?”

“Yes,” Lily said carefully, not fooled at all by his demeanor. “That’s what everybody else believes -- most importantly, Harry himself. Who else would I be?”

“And if I may ask,” Dumbledore continued in that same tone, “how do you plan to handle Petunia Dursley?”

“Handle?” Lily repeated, and the whispers of realization began crawling up from her subconscious.

“Petunia is unlikely to believe you are her sister returned from the dead,” Dumbledore said. “Even if your deception were entirely convincing-- to a degree you have not yet displayed yourself capable, to be perfectly frank-- she would not _want_ to believe. Instead, she would quite rightly see you as an impostor, and it would be folly, I think, to assume she would welcome you into her home.”

“Then I don’t have to be Lily Potter,” Lily said, conceding the point, and a little stung by Dumbledore’s assessment of her acting skills. “I can tell Harry to pretend I’m someone else, and stay with him as his bodyguard or something.”

“Do you truly believe Harry’s aunt and uncle would be willing to board an unfamiliar, unrelated witch in their home all summer? Or, indeed, for any duration.” Dumbledore’s tone was still friendly, but there was a hint of sharpness now, almost as if he was disappointed he had to explain this to her. “That would be a difficult proposition for most families, even without the Dursleys’ particular antipathy to magic.”

Lily’s mind immediately jumped to all the families she knew who _would_ be willing to open their homes to a stranger if the circumstances were right -- including practically every member of the extended Weasley clan she could think of -- but she knew Dumbledore’s point was sound. It didn’t matter if her own aunts and uncles were kind and generous people. Harry’s aunt and uncle were not.

“Our highest priority,” Dumbledore reminded her, “is ensuring that Harry spends sufficient time with his aunt to sustain his mother’s protection. Everything else is secondary to that goal.”

Lily opened her mouth to respond, but she had nothing really to say. Dumbledore had made his point -- she would not be going with Harry to live with the Dursleys. She looked away, and eyed Fawkes’s empty perch, wishing the phoenix were around to bolster her with a little song.

Even if she couldn’t stay, maybe she could at least visit? She certainly wasn’t going to leave him entirely alone in there for two months.

“As it happens,” the Headmaster said idly, “I have an alternate proposal for you, in regards to where you should stay for the summer.”

“All right,” Lily said, turning back to face him. She would visit Harry as regularly as she could get away with, and in the meantime, she would humor the Headmaster. “Where?”

“I have been considering possible locations in which to headquarter the Order of the Phoenix,” Dumbledore said. “There is one that I believe would suit our needs in nearly all respects, but it is in need of some repair, not to mention, most likely, a thorough cleansing. It--”

“Oh!” Lily interrupted, sitting up straight. “You’re talking about Grimmauld Place.”

Dumbledore regarded her with an unreadable expression for a moment. “You’re quite right,” he said.

Lily had only set foot in Number 12, Grimmauld Place a few times in her life. Her father had owned it, of course, and he had lived in it for a short time after the end of the war, but Harry and Ginny Potter had refused to start their married life in such a dreary place, so he’d moved out. Then it just sat there for years and years, unused and mostly untended. When the death of Kreacher the House-Elf left it truly vacant, her father donated the house to the Ministry. There were talks of converting it into a museum, but nothing had come of it before Lily’s inadvertent trip to the past.

But, even though she had rarely entered it herself, she certainly knew about its history, including its use as Order headquarters for a few years. There had been no real question in her mind what location Dumbledore had meant.

She wasn’t really looking forward to it, though.

“I can help clean it out and make it safe,” Lily said, because she knew that was what Dumbledore was after. “I can’t do it all on my own, though.”

“You will have Sirius to help you, of course,” Dumbledore said. He was the very picture of a kindly old man again. “Or, more accurately, you will be helping him. I had intended for he and Remus to make headway while many of the rest of us were busy with the end of term, but unfortunately, with Remus indisposed--”

“I understand,” Lily said. She could just picture the work that now lay in her near future. From the stories, she knew that Grimmauld Place was infested by dangerous pests like boggarts and doxies, anti-intruder jinxes, and enough cursed items to fill a seven-stage extended trunk. But it would be worth it for a place to live, and a small part of her was thrilled at the opportunity to so directly participate in a piece of her parents’ history.

She was a little surprised at that, actually. A week ago -- from her perspective -- if someone had offered her the chance to go back in time and help clean up Grimmauld Place, she’d have laughed in their face.

“Excellent,” Dumbledore said, and he folded his hands and regarded her with a small smile. “Was there anything else I might help you with this morning, Lily?”

“Yes,” Lily answered, refocusing. “You can give me the password to the damn gargoyle.”

* * *

Lily stood in the Entrance Hall, watching the enchanted hourglasses. Gryffindor was in the lead over Slytherin, but only just barely. With exams over and the End-of-Term Feast just a few days away, there wasn’t much opportunity left to earn any large amount of points… but there was always time for misbehavior, she supposed, as she watched a handful of rubies slip back up into the top of the Gryffindor glass. She found herself rooting for the house of lions to lose even more -- it was completely irrelevant, but she couldn’t help but feel at least a little of her old house rivalry. 

She was not alone in the hall; students were passing through on their way to the Great Hall for lunch. None of them paid her any mind, because she was Disillusioned and against a wall. She was watching for a particular head of messy black hair, and debating with herself how she wanted to approach the conversation she now had to have with her father. 

Actually, for starters, she was going to try the mindset that he really was her son. _She_ was the adult. _She_ had parental authority. Harry already believed it; if she could just convince herself, she thought, she’d be most of the way there. 

She actually spotted Ron first -- he was taller than Harry, and she had grown up practicing the art of picking Weasleys out of a crowd. He was with Harry and Hermione, of course, and looked particularly eager for the food that awaited him just past the double doors. Lily was almost sorry he would have to wait a little longer. 

She drew her wand and pointed it at Harry. Picturing in her mind the wall against which she stood, including the subtle tell-tale blur of Disillusionment, she focused, and whispered, “ _Endeku._ ” 

Harry came to an abrupt stop and turned to stare in her direction. Hermione stopped nearly as quickly, looking back for an explanation, but it took Ron a couple more steps to realize his friends were no longer next to him. 

Lily dropped her Disillusionment and crooked a finger at Harry, beckoning him over. 

Looking slightly stunned, Harry obeyed, as of course did the other two. Lily waited, and as soon as they were close enough, the very first thing she did was cast a quick _Muffliato_. 

“Mum?” Harry asked once he arrived, sounding more confused than anything else. “Were you invisible just now?” 

“Disillusionment Charm,” she told him. This did not appear to help him any, so she added, “It’s not true invisibility, but it’s close. I just didn’t want to be bothered while I waited for you to come by.” She nodded to the other two in greeting. “Ron. Hermione.” 

“Mrs. Potter,” Ron returned awkwardly, even as Hermione gave a much more collected, “Lily.” The two teens looked at each other, then back forward. 

“I need to talk to you about our summer plans,” she said to Harry. “I don’t mind them listening in, but if you’d prefer more privacy we can do that too.” 

“No, it’s fine,” Harry said. “Saves me telling them anyway.” 

Lily just nodded. She was the adult, she reminded herself. Say it and be done. “Sirius and I will be working on preparing a place to stay, but we won’t be ready by the time you need to leave Hogwarts. You’ll have to stay with your aunt and uncle again for a little while. Just until the house is safe.” 

Harry’s surprise and disappointment were clear on his face, even louder somehow than Hermione’s startled gasp. 

“What house?” he asked. 

“It’s actually Sirius’s old family home,” she said. “He was still in Azkaban when he inherited it, technically. After escaping, he stayed away because the Ministry was watching the area, and because he… wasn’t a fan. Now, things have changed.” 

“Er,” Ron whispered, “is it safe to talk about-- about _Padfoot?”_  

“It’s fine, we’re safe,” Lily said. 

“Privacy charm,” Hermione told him. “Anyone else listening in will just hear a buzzing sound.” She had obviously recognized the _Muffliato_ , though it was amusing to see her talk as if she’d known of it for more than one day. Then, she turned back to Lily. “How is the house not safe?” she asked. “Why do you need to ‘prepare’ it?” 

“It’s been empty for a decade,” Lily said. “On top of all the defenses and… _discouragements_ … set up by the Blacks themselves, all sorts of Dark and unpleasant creatures have moved in since. We need to clear out and clean at least enough to make the house livable before anyone else can move in. Then we can worry about making it _safe_.” 

“But why do I have to go back to the Dursleys?” Harry demanded. “Why can’t I stay somewhere else with you, while you work on the house?” 

“There is no ‘somewhere else,’ Harry,” Lily said. “And even if there were, it wouldn’t be smart for you to live there. Not now, with Voldemort on the loose.” 

Ron flinched, she noticed. Hermione, meanwhile, reached out and touched Harry’s arm. He glanced back, and some unspoken message passed between them. When he turned forward again, he seemed calmer, and more resigned. 

“How long?” he asked. “How long do I have to stay with them?” 

“A few weeks,” Lily said. “For now, let’s say… until Sirius’s trial. Hopefully the house will be ready by then.” 

“So I’m not going to see you for nearly a month?” Harry asked. 

Lily hesitated. “No,” she said, “I’ll try to visit you. I’m sure there will be times I need a break from killing doxies. I’ll try to stop by for an afternoon, or something.” Then, remembering some of the things Dumbledore had said, she added, “Actually, I have something important to ask of you.” 

Harry, who had visibly brightened at the prospect of her visits, nodded immediately. “Of course.” 

“Please don’t tell Petunia about me,” Lily said. “She wouldn’t believe you anyway, but-- I want to tell her on my own terms, when I’m ready.” Which would be never, she added silently. “So, when I visit, I’ll probably be in disguise. Just be ready for that.” 

“Okay,” Harry said slowly. Lily wondered if he’d been planning to keep it a secret anyway. Still, best to be explicit. 

“Great,” she said. “I think that’s everything. I’m sure you three are hungry, and I don’t want to take up any more of your time.” 

“It’s no problem,” Harry said, and even Ron nodded in agreement, which she thought was very generous of him. 

“All right,” she said. “Harry, I’ll see you in a week or so.” She paused, and in that moment, she felt a powerful impulse to step forward and wrap him in her arms, just for a second. It was the eyes of all the curious onlookers that held her back, as other students dawdled in the Entrance Hall on their way to lunch. She just would’ve embarrassed Harry, she told herself. No teenaged boy wanted to be seen hugging his mother. 

But later, even as she stepped out through the gates of Hogwarts to make her way to London, she wondered if she was just fooling herself. 

* * *

Grimmauld Place, in general, was a quiet and slightly creepy Muggle neighborhood. Many of the homes seemed to be in some manner of disrepair, but it was easy to picture them whole and in their prime, the severe architecture of the houses practically looming as they clustered around the square. When night fell and shadows crept their way unevenly across the ground, the effect verged on outright scary. Lily could only imagine the appeal to an ancient, traditional, Pureblood family like the Blacks. 

She stood in the middle of the square, and for the moment, number twelve was not visible in the slightest. Even looking around with a discerning eye, there was no hint that an entire house was missing from the square, no reason that the occupants of numbers eleven and thirteen would ever think they were not neighbors. The Black family had lived among Muggles but they were perfectly, completely hidden. 

Of course, it would be a different story if Lily took out her wand and started looking for magic the way she had in the graveyard. Even without the detection charms, the area was so suffused with it she could swear she could almost feel it prickling her skin. 

Before she’d left his office, Dumbledore had told her to meet Sirius here, at noon. According to the sun in the sky, it was now just past that. She was a little annoyed that he was late, just on principle, but it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to be. 

She took a few steps closer to the gap that separated eleven and thirteen. She was curious exactly how close she had to get before the house would show itself. Closer than she was, apparently. She took another few steps, and still nothing. 

A sound behind her made her turn around -- Sirius was striding up from the other side of the square. He had cleaned himself up a little since the morning, and he was wearing Muggle clothing, dark brown trousers and a wool coat. Lily’s first thought was that it looked much too hot to wear in summer. She herself was still in robes -- the same robes she’d been wearing now for several days -- but at least they were nondescript enough to look like a dress from a distance. 

“If you were trying to stay inconspicuous,” Sirius said by of greeting, “inching slowly across the grass was not the way.” 

“I was bored,” Lily said. “Is there even anyone here? I haven’t seen any signs of life yet.” 

“The houses are occupied, if that’s what you mean,” Sirius said. “I don’t know if anyone’s home right this second. Regardless, they’re not the only eyes to worry about.” He just stood, for the moment, looking forward at where the house would appear. “You know what we’re here for, I assume?” 

“Of course,” Lily said. “Dumbledore explained it to me.” 

“Just remember, I have no idea what things are going to be like inside, but I know it won’t be pleasant.” Sirius sighed heavily. “Time to go home, I guess.” 

“Right,” Lily said, but Sirius had already left her side, walking resolutely forward. She hurried to follow him. It was only a few feet later that they passed whatever boundary, and number twelve blossomed out into space in front of them. It was in no better condition than the buildings beside it, with dirty windows and paint peeling from the walls. Maybe that was still part of the camouflage, to fit in with the other houses, but somehow Lily doubted that. 

The front door was scratched and worn, painted a thematically-appropriate black with a silver knocker in the shape of a snake. There was no keyhole or door knob or anything. It wasn’t the only door Lily had ever seen that could only be opened with magic, but by her time they had fallen far, far out of fashion, used only by those who willing to be seen as almost aggressive in their Pureblood orthodoxy, even in a post-Voldemort era. 

Sirius drew his wand and tapped on the door. It gave a long, menacing creak in response. He just shook his head. “I never thought I would come back here,” he said, and then he laid his hand flat upon the door. He cleared his throat, then declared firmly, “I am Sirius Orion Black. I claim this house as mine.” 

There were a number of loud clicks, and the door seemed to shudder as if in disappointment. Then, with a distant sound of rattling chains, the door swung open before them. Lily was hit immediately by the smell of must and rot. 

Sirius’s face was the very picture of disgust. “It’s even worse than I expected,” he said, staring in. 

The hallway that stretched forward from the doorway had no windows, and there were no lights inside. From what Lily could see in the darkness, the carpet was faded and worn, the wallpaper was coming off the wall in big patches, and there were cobwebs covering _everything_ , but she actually had the opposite reaction. She’d been expecting worse. 

“I don’t see anything too bad,” she said. Then she pulled out her wand and began checking the entrance for traps and jinxes. There were several of both. She grimaced. “I spoke too soon. It’s going to take some doing before we can even step inside.” 

Ignoring her, Sirius stepped inside. “The house won’t bother me,” he said over her sounds of protest. “It knows who its master is.” Then he frowned for a moment, looking off down the hallway. “Speaking of…” he muttered, then called out, “Kreacher!” 

There was a loud crack, and Kreacher appeared in the hall, standing stock-still, staring aghast at the last of the Blacks. 

“Hullo, Kreacher,” Sirius said humorlessly. “I’m home.” 

“Mistress will not like this,” the House-Elf said in his low, croaking voice. “The blood traitor is back from Azkaban, ungrateful wretch, filthy murderer, mistress will not like this at all--” 

“Be quiet,” Sirius ordered, and Kreacher dove forward in an over-exaggerated bow, all the while continuing his muttering, though at a lower volume. 

“--The blood traitor is Kreacher’s master now, but Kreacher doesn’t have to like it, oh my poor mistress, what will she say when she learns, she said he was no son of hers, mistress will be so displeased he’s come back--” 

“Kreacher!” Sirius barked, his face now a stony mask. “What do you mean, ‘when she learns’? My mother is _dead_.” 

Kreacher broke into sobs, and large, beady tears began rolling down his nose. “Poor mistress! Poor mistress! Left Kreacher all alone, but she’s still here, mistress will always be here, this is her home, but now it is defiled by blood traitors and mudbloods!” 

With a start, Lily realized that last part must have meant her. She had never been called a mudblood before, and it was a weird experience, because she was actually Pureblood herself -- at least by the most expansive definition of the term. But Kreacher had clearly recognized her as the other Lily Potter, who must have had to deal with that kind of language her whole life. Or her life from eleven on up, anyway. 

“What are you talking about, Kreacher?” Sirius demanded, and his voice took on a decidedly aggrieved tone as he asked, “Is she a _ghost_ now?” 

“Not a ghost, not poor mistress, mistress left Kreacher all alone--” 

“Okay, fine,” Sirius interrupted. He lifted his hand and pointed at Lily. “Kreacher, take down the jinxes on the door and anything else that might prevent her from coming in safely.” When Kreacher did not immediately spring into action, he raised his voice: “That’s an order, Kreacher!” 

Visibly sullen, Kreacher turned and shuffled over to the door. Peering at the threshold with bulbous, watery eyes, he made an odd sound like a angry cat from the back of his throat, and snapped his fingers once. Most of the magic Lily had detected at the door vanished immediately. 

“Kreacher has let the mudblood in,” the House-Elf spoke, mostly to himself, as he turned and started walking away. “Now Kreacher is complicit in defiling this house. Mistress should never have left Kreacher. Kreacher is all alone…” 

His voice trailed off as he slipped away through one of the doors off the long hallway. Sirius didn’t seem to care. “You can come in now,” he said with false cheer. 

Cautiously, Lily stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind her. Without the light from outside, the hallway was cast into almost total darkness. Before she could raise a fuss, Sirius made a small motion, and a line of gas lamps on the wall all flickered to life with a hiss. Everything was still dim, and tinted an ugly yellow, but at least they could see all the way down the hall. On the wall opposite the gas lamps hung a series of portrait frames, and judging by the low, discordant whispers that began to rise, the frames were occupied. 

Sirius made a grand, sweeping gesture. “Welcome to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place,” he said, “the Black family home, and where I grew up.” 

“It sure is…” Lily searched for a word, but before she could find one, Sirius grunted. 

“Exactly,” he said, and he started off down the hall. “I think we should start by clearing out some bedrooms,” he continued as he walked. “Whatever else we’ll find, at least we’ll have a safe place to sleep at night. Then we can take a little tour to see what’s--” He cut off abruptly. 

“Sirius?” Lily asked, too far behind him to see what he was staring at. A moment later, she didn’t need to. A horrible shrill scream echoed through the house, wordless at first, but then one simple word repeated over and over like a mantra, increasing in intensity every time: 

“You! YOU! _YOU!_ **_YOU! YOOOOU!!_ ** ” 

Lily edged up next to Sirius, her hands over her ears, and witnessed the portrait of Walburga Black. Behind her, the other portraits along the wall were raising their own cacophony, either enraged or emboldened by the Mistress Black’s screeching. Sirius himself was frozen in shock, his expression almost a perfect mirror of Kreacher’s just a few minutes before, when the old House-Elf had first laid eyes on his new master. 

“ _Abomination! Scoundrel! Murderer! Blood traitor! You darken my floors with your shame! You sully my air with your filth! Be gone! Be gone! BE GONE!”_  

Lily looked at Sirius, and though he could almost definitely not hear her, she shouted, “We have a lot of work to do, don’t we?”


	8. Hard Work and Heavy Words

They didn’t make a lot of progress, that first day in number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

The shock of seeing his mother’s portrait completely distracted Sirius from whatever other plans he might have had. Once he recovered at least enough to act, he spent over an hour trying everything he could think of to get her off the wall. Lily had helped, but with the peculiar disinterest that came from knowing for a fact that everything he tried was doomed to fail. The portrait, after all, would still be on the wall in thirty years.

Eventually, he just stormed away, vowing loudly that his mother would be out of the house for good by the end of the week even if he had to knock down the wall to do it. Lily just shook her head as she followed him up the stairs, the late Black matriarch’s awful screams echoing up after them for several more minutes until finally, alone in the hall with no one to shout at, she calmed.

Meanwhile, Sirius had gone straight to the top floor of the house, not stopping until he was standing in his own childhood bedroom. It was a mess, of course, not just because of the dust and cobwebs, but also in the sense that it was obvious a teenaged boy had lived there. The wardrobe hung open with discarded clothes covering at least half the floor, the bed looked like it had never been made in its life, and, perhaps most disgustingly, a plate of some unfinished snack had grown into some very interesting shapes on the nightstand.

“Just how I left it,” Sirius muttered humorlessly.

Expecting to find something similar, Lily had turned to enter the other bedroom across the hall, and instead discovered the cleanest room in the house. In fact, as she looked around, she was willing to bet that this was the one room where Kreacher actually did his job. The furniture was dusted and polished, the bed was crisp and neatly made, and in stark contrast with even just the hallway right outside, there was a fresh, citrusy scent that made the air surprisingly pleasant to breathe. It was even decorated with a traditional Slytherin color scheme, while Sirius’s room had been aggressively Gryffindor, beneath the dust.

“I’ll take this one,” she called out to Sirius without hesitation.

Unfortunately this had alerted not just Sirius, but also the House-Elf who had taken such good care of the room for all those years, and to call him livid would be a gross understatement. Kreacher ranted and raved and wailed and whined about how she, a filthy Mudblood, could not be permitted to defile his beloved master Regulus’s sanctuary with her mere presence, much less be permitted to actually sleep there. Lily wasn’t actually sure why Kreacher cared so much about this one particular room when he had so obviously allowed the rest of the house to descend into filth and squalor, but he was so furiously insistent on it that she was almost ready to relinquish her claim before Sirius ended the whole affair by outright banning Kreacher from entering, or even _mentioning_ , the room again.

The rest of the day was spent in Sirius’s room, and by the time they decided to break for the night, they had improved its condition enough that he shrugged, said “I’ve slept in worse,” and proceeded to transform into his dog form and settle on the floor.

Lily spent the night in the relative luxury of a warm, clean bed, and felt a little guilty about it.

It wasn’t until she woke that she realized they maybe should have put some thought into cleaning out the bathroom, too.

By mid-morning, there was still no movement from Sirius, but she decided she had waited long enough. She banged on his door loudly and unceasingly until she finally heard him groan out, “Fine, come in!”

It only took a glance for her to see that the room was better than she’d last seen it -- he was even actually in the bed! -- suggesting that Sirius had put in some more work overnight on his own. She supposed this was an acceptable excuse for sleeping in, but it didn’t change her intent at all.

“I’m going to Diagon Alley,” she told him. “I want to finally go shopping the way I meant to yesterday. I might as well buy supplies for this mess while I’m there -- what do you think we’ll need?”

Sirius, it turned out, was not particularly knowledgeable about household cleaning tools and tricks, but together they managed to cobble up a list of things to shop for. And then, leaving Sirius to finish waking up on his own time, she Apparated halfway across London to the Leaky Cauldron.

As she walked down the alley towards Gringotts, she tried to ignore her sense of deja vu, and instead focused on running down her plan of attack. First, she would rent a room at the Cauldron, primarily for a place to store things until Grimmauld Place was habitable, but also for her first chance at a real bath in several days. Second, she would march over to Madam Malkin’s to get herself measured and to order basically a whole new wardrobe, which ought to make the old witch happy. Third, she would swing by the apothecary for some cleaning reagents and pest-killing draughts, making a start on the list she and Sirius had put together. And then--

She stared up at the marble pillars that flanked the entrance to Gringotts. Why was she headed in there? No wonder she felt like she had already done this part -- she _had_. So where was her gold?

Slowly, she patted her sides, looking for the telltale bulge and jingle of a bag full of galleons. She didn’t feel anything. But she remembered putting the coin bag away in her robes, and she was pretty sure she hadn’t lost it -- unless she’d passed a highly skilled and extremely opportunistic pickpocket between her visit to Ollivanders and her visit from Fawkes. And now that she thought about it, she didn’t think she had felt the weight of it on the walk from Gringotts to the wand shop, either.

Slowly, she slid her hand into her robes. She felt her fingers grasp a bag of galleons. She pulled it out.

She still had her money. She opened the bag and peeked inside to be sure -- she still had her money. She’d had it with her the whole time -- even, she realized, when she was duelling Crouch. She shook the bag, and it made no sound. She put it back in her pocket, and again it was like it wasn’t there.

Either Chippy the House-Elf had handed her enchanted robes from the Hogwarts laundry, or Blordak the Goblin had sold her a very fancy bag indeed. She smiled. Suddenly those five sickles didn’t seem quite so outrageous after all.

She turned away from Gringotts and headed back towards the Leaky Cauldron. Her hot bath awaited her -- and then, fates willing, _shopping_.

* * *

“Dumbledore’s coming by tonight,” Sirius announced. He knew this because he was reading the letter that had just arrived, while Lily tended to the owl.

It was Friday, June 30th, and their fourth evening in Grimmauld Place. It was very odd to think about, but this meant that the Black ancestral home had now occupied more than half of Lily’s time in the past. Her first few days in 1995 had been chaotic and eventful, but lately she had known nothing but their tedious and exhausting two-person war against the ravages of time and neglect.

That was to say, she was looking forward to a bit of change in the routine.

“When tonight?” she asked, as the post owl declined any further nibbles of her dinner. “And what for?”

“Security measures he wants to enact before we can hold any Order meetings here,” Sirius said, and passed over the letter so she could read it for herself. She did; that was what it said, and that was pretty much all it said.

“I guess it doesn't really matter when,” Lily said, half to herself. “It’s all the same to us.” The owl hooted softly and then took off, departing back to Hogwarts, presumably. She cleared away her leftovers, then looked at Sirius. “What do you think,” she said, “finish the kitchen by sundown?”

They didn’t, but they did before Dumbledore actually showed up at around eleven. Lily had actually started to doze off waiting for him, but when he rang the doorbell, the loud clanging set off the portraits, and there was certainly no sleeping through that.

_“Filth! Intruders! The House of Black is fallen into ruin! It is undone by blood traitors and mudbloods!”_

“Come in,” Lily told the old headmaster as she opened the door for him. Behind her, down at the other end of the entrance hall, Sirius struggled with the portrait of his mother, trying to force closed the curtains they had placed over her in their latest effort to keep her quiet. “Don’t mind the noise. It’s just our friendly local welcoming committee.”

_“Murderer! Wretched spawn! Shame of my flesh! You destroy all you touch! You sully all you hold dear!”_

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled as he stepped fully into the house and closed the door behind him. “I daresay I’ve had worse receptions in the past,” he said. He looked around, noting the decrepit condition of the hall. “What can you tell me of your progress here?”

“The entire top floor is good,” Lily said. She had to shout a bit to be heard over Walburga Black’s screaming, but she made do. “That’s where we’ve been sleeping. Soon we’ll start working our way down, clearing out more bedrooms as we go -- we figured housing was a priority here, at least to a point.” It was possible that decision had been influenced by Lily’s knowledge that Harry and the Weasleys would soon be living there, but she wasn’t about to admit that where Sirius could hear. “But we’ve actually been focused on another room for the past couple of days.”

With a hearty grunt of effort, Sirius managed to close the new curtains over his mother’s portrait. She fell silent almost immediately. Maybe the heavy black curtains tricked her into thinking there was no one there to hear her -- Lily wasn’t really going to question it. They worked, was all that mattered.

“Hello, Albus,” Sirius called over, keeping his voice hushed to avoid waking the portrait right back up again. “Come along this way. You’ll want to see the kitchen.”

Dumbledore followed Sirius down the hall and through the door near the end. Lily trailed behind, to avoid crowding his view.

The kitchen was a very long room running parallel to the entrance hall they’d just walked down. Cooking stations and countertops ran the length of the far wall, pots and pans hung from the ceiling almost like decorations, and the majority of the space was taken up by the table -- a great long table that stretched almost as far as the room itself, seating at least a couple dozen people, probably more. And all of it was clean, pest-free, and curse-free, ready for someone to cook up a banquet for a large family -- or to host a meeting of a certain secret society.

“Yes, that should serve nicely,” Dumbledore said when he finished his examination. “I am grateful you were able to make it ready so quickly. I intend to call the first full meeting of the Order for tomorrow afternoon.”

“Tomorrow’s the last day of term,” Lily said. This had been at the back of her mind for the last several days.

“Indeed,” Dumbledore said. “The meeting should conclude well before the Hogwarts Express reaches London.” He looked around for a few more seconds, then said, “I should begin my work. I will need to spend some time outside.”

“What are you going to do?” Lily asked, stepping back to let him out of the kitchen. “Your note just said ‘security measures.’”

“Primarily,” Dumbledore said as he walked back down the length of the entrance hall to the front door, “I intend to put the house under a modified Fidelius Charm.”

“Modified?” Lily trailed after him to the outside, though Sirius stayed indoors. It was a clear night, and comfortably warm. At least one of the other houses in the square had someone home, because they had lights on and surprisingly loud music playing, but otherwise there was no activity that she could see.

Dumbledore took something small out of his pocket and held it up. A moment later, the thing in his hand seemed to suck the light out of the nearby streetlamp. There weren’t many of those in the middle of Grimmauld Place, and the loss of just the one plunged their whole side of the square into shadow, illuminated only by the stars and a thin crescent moon.

Apparently satisfied by that result, Dumbledore lowered the object -- Lily never did get a good look at it -- and exchanged it for his wand, which he used to trace the shape of a box in the air. Lily’s ears popped, and she knew they were now covered by a privacy charm.

She held back on her impulse to badger him again for details, not wanting to disturb the casting of a presumably quite difficult spell. But when he raised his wand again, it was just to draw a sigil in the air in front of the front steps. She remembered enough of N.E.W.T.-level Ancient Runes to interpret it as a dual-purpose sigil, with the properties of anchoring and of marking a boundary.

Well, if all he was doing was drawing sigils, it was probably okay to talk.

“Sirius and I have been talking some about his trial,” she said. “We realized, if I’m going to testify that I cast the Fidelius with Pettigrew as my Secret-Keeper, I should probably know… _how_ to cast a Fidelius.”

Dumbledore took careful, measured steps to the front-right corner of the house, where he drew another sigil, identical to the first. “I do not believe Cornelius will spend his time attempting to discredit Lily Potter,” he said calmly, even as he began to step along the wall to the back-right corner. “I doubt your proficiency with the charm will be challenged.”

“Maybe not in court,” Lily admitted, “but it’s still a hole in my cover. Everyone thinks I can do it, but I can’t.”

“I don’t disagree,” Dumbledore said. He was done with the back-left now and heading up to the front, still with that slow, even pace. “It will take several sessions of instruction. We will meet twice a week throughout July.”

Lily gaped at him, almost not processing that she had just gotten what she wanted. “Thank you,” she finally said.

Dumbledore, finished with the last corner, eyed the roof of the house with some resignation. Then he pointed his wand at his feet and obviously cast a spell, but Lily only saw what it was when he stepped forward and onto the front wall of the house, walking up the wall with about as much difficulty as if it were merely a steep hill. It was not a short climb; the Black family home was three storeys tall from the outside. When he reached the top, he continued along the roof until he reached the center, where he carefully added another sigil. Then, slowly, he reversed his steps until he was once again on the ground next to Lily.

“Are the sigils the modification you mentioned?” Lily asked. “Or are they necessary regardless?”

“Neither,” Dumbledore said, as he paused a moment to recover his breath. “The Fidelius Charm protects a secret. That secret need not be a location. But if it is, good practice encourages that the boundaries of the location be effectively, and objectively, marked.”

“I guess I can see that,” Lily said. It wasn’t the first time she had heard of using sigils to draw the boundaries of a spell -- it was one of the foundations of creating wards, after all. The idea of applying that theory to a charm was new to her, though.

“I have one more sigil to apply,” Dumbledore said. “Please wait out here.”

“Sure,” Lily said, not that he had waited for her to agree. He re-entered the house, and it was only fifteen seconds or so before the door opened again. This time it was Sirius, coming out to stand beside her.

“He kicked me out of my own house,” he explained, sounding more amused than anything.

“He’s going to teach me the Fidelius,” she told him. “Apparently it will take most of July, but hopefully I should have it before your trial.”

“If you’re anything like our Lily, you’ll get it in half the time,” he said with a shrug.

Lily looked away and frowned. Sirius had been doing that a lot -- mentioning the other Lily Potter, usually in order to make a direct comparison. She wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, it was actually quite helpful, because Sirius was effectively coaching her on how to better pretend to be the “real” Lily, instead of relying on looks and assumptions. “Our Lily never laughed like that,” he’d told her once, or “Careful with your wand motions; our Lily was always very precise” -- those things were good to know!

On the other hand, something about the _way_ he said it just didn’t sit right with her. 

A pop at their feet distracted her -- Kreacher was there, pulling at his ears and moaning. “Filthy old man is in Kreacher’s basement,” he said. “Filthy old man is trespassing in Kreacher’s things!”

“Settle down,” Sirius told him sternly. “We’re outside.”

A wave of lightheadedness passed over Lily, and she reached up to rub her temples. Maybe she’d been standing around for too long. Why were they there in the first place? She couldn’t immediately remember, but it was clearly deliberate, so she figured the answer would come to her in time. And until then, she covered her lapse by changing the subject.

“How’s Remus doing?” she asked.

“The same,” Sirius said. The recovering werewolf was well enough to be left alone the majority of the time now, but Sirius still made a point of taking a few minutes each day to visit and check up on him. Lily was never invited along, but she didn’t mind that too much. It wasn’t like she really knew him.

Dumbledore appeared in front of them, and it took all of Lily’s self-control not to jump in fright. She kicked herself for forgetting that he was there too.

“All three of you, listen carefully,” the old man said, clasping his hands and gazing seriously at the rest of them, including the still-muttering Kreacher. “The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix can be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place.”

Lily could almost feel the connections slotting together in her mind, almost like she had just figured out some great puzzle. She could see the house again now, too -- not that she’d even remembered it to realize she couldn’t, before.

“Wait a minute,” she protested, realizing. “You cast the charm inside? I wanted to watch!”

“You’ll have ample opportunity soon enough,” Dumbledore told her, then raised his hand again -- this time, Lily was able to see that he was holding a small, silver cigarette lighter. He clicked it once, and in a quick flash, the light it had previously stolen was returned to the streetlamp. “We should return indoors.”

“Won’t argue with that,” Sirius said.

Lily shivered as she passed through the threshold to re-enter the house. She told herself it was from passing through the boundary of the Fidelius, but even as she did, she knew that wasn’t true. Not in any magical sense, at least. But somehow the whole thing just felt more… real. She’d spent days cleaning up the old Black family home, but now -- now, it was more than that. Now, it was the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix.

She shook her head, then moved to join the others in the kitchen. Headquarters or not, it was a messy old house, and she’d been stuck in it for too long.

Tomorrow, Harry would be heading home to the Dursleys. Soon, Lily promised herself, she would visit him. It would do them both some good.

* * *

“Thank you all for coming,” Dumbledore said. He hadn’t bothered to raise his voice, but all the side conversations at the table died instantly. “We have a lot to discuss this afternoon, so let us commence without further delay.”

The first official meeting of the new Order of the Phoenix had begun in Sirius’s kitchen. Dumbledore sat at the head of the table, of course. Sirius sat to his left, with his arms crossed and a perfectly blank expression on his face. He obviously wasn’t very happy about the way some of the other members of the Order kept shooting him half-suspicious glances, even though Dumbledore had promised him that everyone attending had been brought up to date on the whole ‘Sirius has always been innocent’ thing.

The other Order members around the table were a mix of people Lily had already met directly, like Tonks, or Shacklebolt; people she had never seen before, like a tow-headed wizard named Sturgis Podmore; and people she had to try very hard not to freak out about -- like Arthur Weasley, her own grandfather. All told, it wasn’t nearly as many people as Lily had expected. All that work to clear out the kitchen, and it was less than half full.

“As you are all aware,” Dumbledore continued, “the Minister continues to deny Voldemort’s return, and has been leaning on the _Daily Prophet_ to that respect.” In fact, the _Prophet_ had launched a whole series of articles ‘investigating’ Lily’s own alleged return, which Lily thought was pretty funny, because none of the so-called experts writing about her were bothering to actually reach out for an interview. The point seemed to be simply to provide several possible theories to latch on to that didn’t involve Voldemort in any way, shape, or form. All of them were nonsense, of course -- though to be fair, so was the ‘official’ explanation that Dumbledore was pushing. “Many of our plans moving forward,” Dumbledore said, “will depend in part on the prevailing opinion of the public. I will be relying on all of you to be my ears on the ground, as they say.” His gaze swept over the small crowd gathered at the table.

“Most of the Auror department is lukewarm on the prospect,” Shacklebolt spoke up. “They see through Fudge’s bluster, but they’re holding out for a little more evidence before they fully accept that You-Know-Who is back. There are outliers on either side, of course -- some folks loyal to the Minister, and others who have already said they believe. There are one or two I might be able to recruit, if you want me to.”

“Please do,” Dumbledore said. He folded his hands on the table. “As to our actual operations, there are four areas I believe we need to focus on, at least for the time being.

“First, the condition of this house. Sirius and Lily have done a remarkable job in their first few days here, but even if they were not needed elsewhere, it would be unreasonable to leave the remainder of the task to them alone.” The fact that she might be needed elsewhere was news to Lily, but if it got her out of cleaning, she was hardly going to complain. Dumbledore looked at the Weasley patriarch. “Arthur, I was hoping we might avail ourselves of Molly’s expertise.”

Arthur scratched at his cheek. “She’s been worried about keeping the children safe this summer,” he admitted. “I think if we can move the whole family in, she’d be willing to leave the Burrow empty for a while. And you know her; once she’s here, she’ll help in every way she knows how.”

Dumbledore turned to Lily. “How long do you believe it would take to clear out living space for the Weasley family?”

“How many rooms?” she asked, looking at her grandfather.

“Four, I should think,” Arthur said, and counted them out on his fingers. “One for me and Molly, one for the twins, and then one each for Ron and Ginny. Harry and Hermione can share those rooms as well, if they end up coming, like at the Burrow.”

Lily privately scoffed at that _if_. “Okay,” she said aloud. “That should take about a week if Sirius and I go at it full-time -- longer, obviously, if we get pulled away to other projects.”

“Let us plan for two weeks,” Dumbledore said, “and then adjust if necessary.” He tapped his fingers lightly on the table. “And speaking of Harry, the second matter we must address pertains to his own safety this summer, while he resides at his Aunt’s house.”

Sirius shifted in his seat, his expressionless face slipping into a scowl. Lily agreed with the sentiment.

“I believe it would be best to maintain a watch on Harry,” Dumbledore said. “A single Order member should suffice, posted outside the house under an invisibility cloak. They could keep an eye on things, and would be able to react immediately should the need arise.”

“Do you mean like a guard,” Sturgis Podmore asked, “or like a spy?”

“More the former than the latter,” Dumbledore said.

“Staking out a Muggle neighborhood is going to be really dull,” Tonks commented.

“I certainly hope so,” Dumbledore replied.

“We’ll have to organize a schedule,” Shacklebolt said. “Share the pain evenly.”

Lily said, “There had better not be anyone creeping about under a cloak when I’m visiting my son.”

There was a moment of awkward silence at the table. Then Dumbledore said, “Lily, I’m not sure it’s wise to--”

“I don’t care,” Lily interrupted. “It’s bad enough he has to live there for a month.” She pointed at Shacklebolt. “Go ahead and put me on the schedule. When it’s my turn to watch him, I’ll just be a bit more open about it than the rest of you.”

“Are we starting right away?” Shacklebolt asked, with an eye on Dumbledore. “If so, the first shift would be tonight. If you take that one, that’ll give me time to figure out who can take over in the morning.”

“That works for me,” Lily said. She was already starting to plan in her head how to rendezvous with Harry without alerting Petunia.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. “Very well,” he said. “I will leave the organization of this watch in the hands of our capable Aurors. We will move on, then, to our third area of concern: recruitment and outreach.” He leaned forward a bit. “Kingsley, you already mentioned additional members of your department you believe may be willing to join us. As I said earlier, please do reach out to them, and I encourage all of us to seek out like-minded, potential allies. However, I am speaking primarily of those populations we do not have such ready access to.”

“You want Remus to talk to the werewolves again,” Sirius said sullenly.

Dumbledore paused. “Once he has fully recovered, yes,” he said. “He would be our best ambassador there. I also believe it would be prudent to send a delegation to the giants -- Hagrid, perhaps with Olympe if we can convince her.”

Lily tuned him out. She wasn’t particularly interested in listening to the Order plan field trips. Besides, she was pretty sure she knew how they were going to go. A pack of werewolves would join Voldemort no matter what Remus said, and Hagrid would come home with a secret little brother.

On the other hand, even though she had that future knowledge, they still had to do the work, she supposed. Otherwise, maybe even more werewolves would join, and… something bad would happen with the giants, probably. Lily didn’t really know the details of that whole situation.

As Dumbledore talked to Arthur about using Bill as an envoy to the goblins, Lily’s mind drifted further. She returned to her plans to see Harry that evening. She considered meeting him at King’s Cross, but decided it would be too risky. She would have to stand around waiting with dozens or maybe hundreds of parents all eager to pick up their children, and that was more of a crowd than she really wanted to deal with.

Plus, she didn’t feel like giving the _Prophet_ such a convenient opportunity to take more photos of her.

She would wait until Harry got home with the Dursleys, then. Assuming they ate dinner soon after, she could wait through that, too. Then she would draw Harry out of the house and they would have a chat. Simple!

“...fourth area of concern,” Dumbledore was saying, and she realized she should pay attention again. “I believe Voldemort will soon attempt to break into the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. What options do we have to prevent him from succeeding?”

“What does he want from the Department of Mysteries?” Shacklebolt asked, a small frown creasing his forehead.

“And how do you know?” Tonks added.

“I happen to know that a prophecy was made concerning Voldemort,” Dumbledore said, and Lily sat up very straight in her chair. “Moreover, I know that Voldemort is aware not only of the existence of the prophecy, but also of _some_ of its contents -- but not all. I believe he will consider it a priority to discover the remainder.”

Lily knew about this prophecy. She did not know what it said. No one did, except for her father, who had infamously walked out of an interview when a hapless reporter tried to ask about it -- and also, maybe, Lily _suspected_ , her mother and her Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron, but they always refused to confirm that they had ever heard even a paraphrase.

But while she didn’t know the words, she knew that Voldemort’s quest to obtain it would end in a full-out battle in the Department of Mysteries -- where the only record of the prophecy would be lost, Sirius would be killed, and Voldemort would be seen by Cornelius Fudge himself, ending the Minister’s year-long campaign to stick his head as deep in the sand as possible.

If Lily could do any good in the past at all, preventing that whole mess would probably be a good place to start. She just had to figure out _how_.

“We could post someone in the Department to keep watch,” Shacklebolt was saying, “but we’re going to be stretched thin maintaining two guard posts at the same time.”

“Indeed,” Dumbledore said. “I do not believe Voldemort is prepared to move within the Ministry as yet, so our priority for the time being is in protecting Harry. Once it is possible to do so, we will move him here to Headquarters.”

“And then we can just move the guard over to the Ministry,” Shacklebolt said, nodding. “Until then… does anyone have any contacts in the Department?”

“I know someone,” Arthur said slowly. “More an acquaintance than a friend, but we’re on speaking terms. Why?”

“Do you think you could get him to tell you about what security the Department already has on the Hall of Prophecies? It’ll be easier to come up with a plan of defense if we can figure out what the weaknesses are.”

Lily couldn’t help but imagine an army of wizards in unfamiliar red robes -- that had to count as a weakness, surely? They hadn’t been after a prophecy, though. Or maybe they had! What did she know about it anyway?

“I doubt I’ll get much out of him, to be honest,” Arthur said. “But I’ll give it a try.”

“So, if I may,” Dumbledore said, “I will attempt to summarize our course of action going forward. We will implement a full-time, rotating watch on Harry, starting this evening, with the first shift taken by Lily. At the same time, we will attempt to gather intelligence about the Hall of Prophecies in the Department of Mysteries, and will move the rotating watch into the Department as soon as Harry is safely within Headquarters. Arthur, you will speak to Bill about outreach to the goblins; I will speak to Hagrid about the same to the giants, and Remus will reach out to the werewolves upon his full recovery. All of us will keep our eyes and ears open to see who among our peers might be amenable to helping our cause, and to gauge how well the Minister is able to convince the public that there is nothing at all to worry about.”

Dumbledore took a moment to gaze about the table. Everyone seemed to be on the same page, so he visibly relaxed, and just like that, the meeting was obviously over. But, before dismissing them, the Headmaster spoke again. “As a final closing note,” he said, “I am once again in need of a new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for the upcoming school year. While I have leads of my own I intend to follow, I would not turn away any references or suggestions you may have to offer.”

His eyes flicked over to Lily, and she realized with surprise that he was hoping she would be able to give him some sort of hint. Unfortunately for him, she knew exactly who ended up filling that position for the upcoming year -- and why. Trying to remain subtle, she gave him a tiny, hopefully innocuous shrug.

Nobody else spoke up either, for that matter, and Dumbledore nodded. “For those of you heading over to King’s Cross,” he said, “the Express should be arriving in about an hour. Once again, thank you all for coming. I will contact each you in advance of the next meeting.”

The other Order members gathered began to rise and wish each other farewell. Lily moved to do the same, mostly to be polite, but Dumbledore lifted a hand. “Lily, a word, if you please.”

Figuring he was just going to follow up on that shrug, she nodded and waited patiently for the room to clear out. Even Sirius had left, trying to keep the others quiet as they paraded past the portraits to the front door.

But Dumbledore didn’t say anything about the Defence Against the Dark Arts professorship, or about the future at all. Instead, he pulled a bundle of silvery fabric out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Alastor’s cloak,” he said. “Curiously, I had to recover it from the House-Elves.”

Lily wheeled her mind back, and remembered how Harry had dropped it on the floor of the Hospital Wing. “Sorry,” she said.

“I trust you will remember what we spoke of Tuesday,” Dumbledore said. “Do not allow yourself to be seen by Petunia.”

“I remember,” Lily said. “And Harry knows not to mention me to her, either.”

“Good,” he said, and stood up. Lily followed, and they were nearly out of the kitchen when Dumbledore paused and turned back. “Also,” he said, “don’t forget about the Trace.”

* * *

_Don’t forget about the Trace._

She _had_ forgotten about the Trace.

Lily stood on the corner of Privet Drive, under Alastor Moody’s invisibility cloak. Harry had arrived home less than an hour before, and she was officially on duty, keeping watch. So far, nothing had happened. She hadn’t really expected anything. She did have to keep counting houses to figure out which was Number Four, because from the outside they all looked the same.

And most of her plans for talking to Harry had involved drawing him outside with magic, because she had forgotten about the Trace.

To be fair, it hadn’t been a factor in her life for several years, and even before that only barely. Growing up in the Potter household, she and her brothers had figured out very quickly that if they were careful and didn’t do anything too flashy, the Ministry couldn’t actually tell when they did magic outside of school. They thought this proved that the Trace didn’t work inside a magic-rich environment like a wizarding home. It was only once they were adults, and Lily and Al both had actual jobs within the Ministry, that they learned the truth: the Trace did work in wizarding homes, in the sense that it would detect magic cast by an underage student -- but it was effectively useless, because it would also detect magic cast _near_ an underage student, and it couldn’t tell the difference. Either one would ping the Trace just the same.

That was all well and good for children with magical parents, but it left Muggle-borns in the lurch a little bit. Any magic cast too close to them would set off the Trace, and the Ministry would think they had done it, because who else could it have been?

Harry wasn’t a Muggle-born, but when it came to the Trace he may as well have been, since he lived in an all-Muggle neighborhood. That meant Lily couldn’t cast anything too close to him, or the Ministry would detect it and get very upset. That was the issue she had completely overlooked when she had forgotten about the Trace.

The problem she was having _now_ was that she had no idea how close was too close. In the same room, almost definitely. In separate rooms in the same house, maybe. Out on the street… probably safe?

But it would be a whole big mess if she was wrong, so she wasn’t going to test it any time soon.

She wasn’t too worried about it yet; she had literally all night, and maybe even the morning, depending on when her replacement showed up. And despite how insistent she had been on getting to talk to Harry, it wasn’t actually urgent in any real sense. Nothing terrible would happen if she had to wait a day or two. And before her next watch, she was going to go down to the Ministry and tell them she would be around Harry occasionally over the summer. Then, even if they did detect something, at least she could say she had warned them.

A door opened down the street, and Lily snapped to attention. Even from a distance, Harry’s unkempt black hair was distinctive, though he was now wearing some extremely ill-fitting Muggle clothes. He turned and starting walking up the street, in Lily’s direction, with his head down and his hands in his pockets. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere specific, he had just wanted to get out of the house, and that suited Lily just fine. His current path would take him right past her, and that was about as convenient as it could get.

Of course, she had to remind herself that she was both unexpected and invisible. She didn’t want to _scare_ him.

When he was a couple of yards past her, Lily began to follow, and she deliberately scuffed her feet a bit to make noise. Harry lifted his head slightly, so she figured he had noticed. “Harry,” she said.

He stopped immediately, and turned around. Since he couldn’t see her, he looked all around, eyes wide. She cleared her throat. “I’m invisible,” she said, “but I’m here.”

“Mum?” Harry said, now able to more or less look at where her voice was coming from. It was still interesting, seeing someone’s eyes pointed in her direction, but not actually focused on her.

“Of course,” she answered. “I told you I would visit.”

Harry hesitated for a few seconds, clearly debating something internally. Then he said, “What did I bring you for breakfast in the Hospital Wing?”

Lily almost laughed. It was perfectly fair and reasonable him for him to challenge her identity -- in fact, she was kind of proud of him for thinking of it -- but in that moment, she couldn’t help but compare him at fourteen to the Auror he would one day become, and the contrast was… stark.

“Bacon and scones,” she said, and he nodded, relieved.

“You said you’d be in disguise,” he said, “not invisible.”

“I forgot about Moody’s cloak,” she said with a shrug he couldn’t see. “Is there someplace nearby we can sit and chat so you don’t look like you’re talking to yourself on a street corner?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “there’s a park nearby. That’s where I was going, anyway.”

“Great,” Lily said. “Then lead on and I’ll follow.”

Slowly, Harry turned and began to walk away again, slower than before, and with an awkward glance over his shoulder after just a few seconds.

“You’re not going to lose me,” Lily told him, and resisted the temptation to poke him in the back. “Just walk normally.”

Harry nodded, and he did speed up, but his gait was still a bit stiff. Lily sighed, and decided to distract him with some more conversation, even though they weren’t at the park yet. “The house cleaning is going well,” she said. “We finished the kitchen yesterday.”

“That’s good,” Harry said, slightly strained.

Lily frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Harry said, and then followed it almost immediately with, “When do you think I’ll be able to move in?”

Lily considered the timeline she had given for the Weasleys. “Two or three weeks at a minimum,” she said. “Depending on how long it takes us to clear out the second-floor bedrooms, plus a lot of factors outside of my control.”

“Oh,” Harry said.

“Have the Dursleys been that bad already?” Lily asked. He’d only been home for like an hour…

Harry looked up at the sky, which would start fading into dusk soon. “It’s just been a weird day,” he said.

They were both quiet after that, until they got to the park. It was a nice spot, a whole block full of grass, with the playground mainstays -- swings and a slide -- off to the side. Opposite the playground were a couple of picnic tables and a freestanding coal grill, which obviously hadn’t been used in a while.

Lily expected to sit at one of the picnic tables, but Harry zeroed in on the swings instead. He settled onto one, pushing back and forth a bit, but not actually swinging.

After taking a long, careful look in all directions to see if anyone was around, Lily stepped under the slide -- it was the only real cover around -- and slipped off the invisibility cloak. When she stepped out into view, Harry looked faintly surprised, but didn’t comment. She sat on the other swing next to him.

It wasn’t nearly as comfortable as he made it look.

“So,” she said after a few moments of companionable silence, “I did have a bit of an agenda, wanting to talk to you like this. I mean, beyond just wanting to see you and make sure you’re okay.”

He looked over at her. “What was it?” he asked guardedly.

Lily took a deep breath. “I want to hear your story,” she said. “From you. I’ve heard bits and pieces--” _from your older self_ , she did not add -- “but I think it would be good if I could just… hear it all. Directly from you.”

“My story?” Harry repeated.

“What was it like growing up with Petunia’s family?” she asked. “How has your time at Hogwarts gone? What are all the ways that you’ve nearly died so far?”

His mouth hung open for a bit. “What bits and pieces have you heard?” he asked.

“Nope,” Lily said. “I’m not going to influence your storytelling. Just give me everything, from the very beginning.”

Harry grimaced, and looked away. “I don’t know about everything,” he said. “I guess I can start with the day I met Hagrid…”

**Author's Note:**

> Whew.
> 
> Chapter nine when it's ready.


End file.
